Rewriting The History of Things To Come
by TermFan1980
Summary: REVISED ENDING. Starts with the final scene from Season 2. John is marooned in a time and place where nobody knows his name. Meeting Allison complicates John's feelings for Cameron.
1. First Impressions

**Author's Note: This is my take on a possible third season, and also a possible tie-in with the new movies. I've decided to take a departure from the well worn path of Jameron fanfics, and write something involving a John/Allison relationship. Just letting you know up front, but I hope that doesn't deter the Jameron fans from reading this story. Also, since I'm trying to tie this in with the new movie(s), don't be surprised to see Kate Brewster(Connor) show up at some point.**

* * *

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 1 – First Impressions**

John was in shock and dismay. How could Derek not know who he was? And what was with that comment about being famous for wearing his brother's coat? It wasn't until he saw Kyle step out of the shadows that he realized that Derek's brother was the father he never met. Of course he knew that Derek's brother was Kyle, and he should have known what he meant instantly, but confusion was attacking him from every angle. His brain was didn't have the quick wit that it would normally have.

But as soon as he saw him, he knew it was Kyle. Even without ever having seen a picture, and having no idea what he looked like, he knew. It was an unknown presence about him... like meeting someone from a past life.

Kyle seemed to have a similar reaction to John. As though he just couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he knew the kid from somewhere.

Before John could process any more thought on the subject of his father, he saw _her_.

_Cameron,_ he thought as he watched the brown haired girl appear from behind Kyle. His level of elation started to rise. His foggy, time-lagged brain was swelling with joy as he saw his cyborg companion approaching. But as quickly as his mood increased, it fell. When he saw her crouch down and pet the guard dog, it clicked in his head. It couldn't be Cameron. Dogs hated Cameron. And this girl was smiling. She seemed too... alive, to be Cameron. He had grown so accustomed to seeing nothing but a blank stare on Cameron's face, that the slightest smile from the unknown girl in front of him was enough to seal John's mind. _No...She's not Cameron._

He was both devastated and confused at the same time. It was obviously not Cameron, but who? This girl was obviously human.

Her smile faded quickly when she looked up at the strange boy that had suddenly appeared in the tunnels, and who was wearing her boss's coat. Her demeanor changed to that of suspicion and contempt.

"What's your name, kid?" Kyle finally asked him.

At first, John was tongue tied. He had freely given his name to Derek, but that was like greeting old friends. _Old, dead friends anyway._ Hearing his father speak to him for the first time sent chill down his spine, as did the raised eyebrow that Kyle shot at him for not answering the question in a timely fashion.

"John. Connor." He swallowed the lump that was building in his throat.

"Well, John... would you mind telling me what you're doing in our camp, and with my coat?"

"I... I didn't know it was yours." John stammered. "I just grabbed the first piece of clothing I could find."

"Why were you naked in the first place?" Kyle pressed on.

What was he supposed to say to that? That he just arrived from the good 'ole year of 2009? Oh and by the way, clothing doesn't go through the time machine? No. That conversation would have to wait for another day, if ever.

Before John could come up with a convincing lie, the girl stood up from her crouched position next to the dog and said to Kyle, "I'll tell you why. Because he's one of those goddamned Burbank punks." She turned to John and glared at him though thin eyes. "That's right, isn't it, you little maggot?" She took a couple steps toward John, accosting him.

Both confused by her accusation, and somewhat frightened by her advance, John took a half step back. "No... I'm not from..."

"You lying sack of shit!" she scolded him, tilting her head slightly to the side, which reminded him—and simultaneously scared the hell out of him--of Cameron. _She's not Cameron,_ he repeated to himself, and stood his ground.

"I'm not from Burbank," he said solidly and confidently, matching her glare with his own. Like staring into the eyes of a wild dog, this only managed to anger her even more, and her fist soon landed on John's jaw.

He fell to the ground, half in shock, and half in pain. She had one hell of a right hook. He couldn't imagine a punch from Cameron being much worse.

"BASTARD!" she yelled as she kicked him in the ribs. "You elitist pricks! You tell Grissam that he and the rest of those sons of bitches are going to PAY some day!"

Another kick would have landed in John's gut if Kyle hadn't yanked her back, causing her to stumble, and kick nothing but air. She would have fallen over if Kyle's grip on her overcoat was anything but vice-like. "ALLISON!! Stop!" He commanded. "We don't know anything about this boy yet, so control yourself!"

"Look at him, Kyle!" she jutted her hand out in John's direction. "Not a speck of dirt on him! He's clean shaven, and about as tough as your average cancer patient! Obviously living in that enclave of Grissam's, enjoying running water and not lifting a finger to fight the machines!"

A couple of "yeah's" came from the small ground of soldiers, accompanied by some nodding.

Derek looked down at the boy on the ground, who was clutching his ribs, and spitting out a small amount of blood that was coming from either his lip, or teeth. He didn't know which. "Just because he's clean doesn't make him the enemy, Allison." He said calmly.

"Damnit Derek! You know as well as I do that he's another one of Grissam's scouts, and..."

Her tantrum was cut short when Kyle, whose fist was still clenching the collar of her coat, rattled her a bit, and told her very authoritatively to stand down. "You are dismissed, soldier." He let go of her coat and glared at her as she huffed and walked away down the corridor. "Derek, take him to the holding cell until we can figure out what to do with him." As he turned to leave he said, "And get him some clothes so I can have my jacket back."

Derek nodded and reached down to offer John his hand. Derek pulled John to his feet. "You all right there, sport?" This was Derek's way of saying _"Sorry about Allison... she's wound a pretty tight."_

"Yeah... I'll live," he replied sardonically, using his fingers to wiggle a tooth that he suspected of being loose.

* * *

Sitting on the cold concrete floor in his holding cell, John had the rest of the day and night to gather his thoughts about just what the hell was going on. He had pieced together that nobody knew who he was because he time-traveled past the time in his life when he would have started leading people to rise against the machines. John Connor didn't exist in this future. He may as well be John Doe. It made him question everything he had been raised to believe. It made his questions his own existence as the "born leader", or "savior of mankind". _No Fate... yeah, no shit._ He rolled his eyes at the thought. It was apparent people would fight back even without him as their leader. _Must be something in the Reese blood though, because Kyle and Derek seem to be in charge... here at least._

And that girl... Allison? She looked so much like Cameron that she could be her identical twin. No... even identical twins usually had subtle nuances that allowed the careful eye to tell them apart. Allison and Cameron were like clones of each other. _Clones..._ he pondered. _Was Cameron's skin cloned from Allison? Yeah... gotta be. _

Now that he thought about it, he recalled Cameron referring to herself as Allison once. Her chip was acting up, and she thought she was this Allison character. Well it turns out that Allison is a real person, not a character. _Allison... from Glendale.... or was it Palmdale? Shit...Time-lag. I can't think straight._

He rested his head on the block wall, exhaled deeply, and thought of Cameron. _Oh, Cameron..._ he began to feel the lump in his throat building again as he recalled Cameron's lifeless body sitting in the chair in the basement of Zierra Corp. Her face was destroyed, but he hardly noticed that. At the time, all he could think about was how to get her chip back. How to get _her_ back.

_Idiot!_ He scolded himself. He was beginning to see what a terrible mistake it was to jump though time with Weaver. He was chasing a ghost. Cameron was gone, and for all he knew, her body vaporized into the ether of space-time along with his clothes when the time-bubble swallowed them all. Now he was stuck here all alone. No one to turn to, no place to call home. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes, pushing out a pair of tears.

_I loved you, Cameron. _Was that true though? Had he fallen in love with her? This was the first time he had ever admitted it to himself, and something just didn't feel right about it. She wasn't a person. She couldn't feel the love he projected to her, nor could she return it. Furthermore, after having met Allison, he realized that Cameron wasn't even an original. She was obviously a copy of the human girl, both in looks and parts of her personality. It was depressing to John, like he'd been duped by the most elaborate prank in history. It was like Cameron wasn't even real to him any more. He may as well have fallen in love with a photograph.

_A photograph... ha! _He let out a single chuckle to himself at that though. _There's more of that Reese bloodline working its magic. Dad fell in love with a photograph of Mom, and traveled across time to be with her. I go and fall in love with a 'photograph' of... ... Allison... What happens when I finally meet her? She hates my guts._

He wouldn't expect anything less from the cruel irony that is the life of John Connor.

To Be Continued...

* * *

**A/N: Well... there you have it... my attempt at a Season 3 fanfic. Let me know what you think. I'll try to update fairly often, but I tend to sit on a chapter for a week, and tweak it over and over before I upload it. Maybe I should get a beta reader... anyone interested in that? how does that even work?**


	2. Get Out Of Jail Free

**Author's Note: I should clarify that the tie in with the movies will ignore the events of T3. The tie-in will be with T4. Kate will be a significant part of that tie-in, but she won't show up for quite a while, and possibly not until the final chapter or two... I haven't mapped out everything 100% yet, but have a general direction where I want to end up. So don't worry... all of our favorite TSCC characters will still be here, and I may mix in other T4 characters as well, such as Barnes, Blair Williams, Star, etc. Once the movie comes out, I'm sure I'll get plenty of ideas for other tie-in/cameo appearances. Until then, I'll be focusing on the end-of-S2TSCC characters.**

* * *

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 2 – Get Out Of Jail Free**

John didn't sleep much that night. Something about laying his head on jagged concrete just didn't bring sleep to the ex-savoir of mankind. There wasn't much light, but John could see random shadows of passers-by cast on the walls from the distant light bulbs and random small campfires that some of the refugees had set up.

He sat next to the door of his cell, hanging on to it with his hands, and resting his head in the gap between two bars. Despite the ever increasing dull pain of the rusting steel bars digging into his forehead, he was actually becoming a bit relaxed in this position. He closed his eyes and thought for a moment that he might dose off for a short while, and maybe he did. It was hard to tell, because seemingly instantly after his heavy eyelids closed, he felt a warm, semi-rough, wet object being dragged across his forehead over and over.

He looked up to see the source of this odd sensation; a German Shepherd Dog, licking his face. Once he figured out what was happening, he almost immediately felt a rush of happiness. Giggling slightly, he reached through the bars and rubbed the dog behind its ears, while enjoying the barrage of dog-kisses he was receiving. This was the best treatment by anyone or anything that he'd received since he arrived in this time, and he was damn well going to enjoy it.

Since he was busy petting the playful dog, and scrunching his eyes closed while its tongue continued to lap at his face, John didn't notice a person walk up next to the dog. John's moment of joy with the dog ended when the person grabbed his hand and yanked it, hard.

John was pulled forward into the cell door, smacking his face on the steel bars.

"What do you think you're doing with my dog?!?" a young woman's voice shouted. "Don't you EVER touch my dog, you Burbank SCUM!!"

John recognized the voice. He also recognized the abuse. It was Allison.

"I was just petting it... I'm sorry!" John asserted. He yelped in pain as Allison twisted his arm, threatening to break it. "Please! Don't break my arm!" he begged. "He... He reminded me of a dog I had when I was younger... Max."

Allison eased the torque on his arm, but still held her grip. Noticing that mentioning his childhood dog seemed to gain a bit of sympathy from the infuriated girl, he continued. "I miss him... please. He was killed by a machine when I was 13." John forced a choked-up sort of, half-cry to mix into his speech, although he didn't have to act very hard. He DID miss his dog, Max; one of many victims to the dark cloud of death that followed him everywhere.

Before he knew it, the grip on his hand was released, and he fell backwards, landing on his rear. A few moments of silence passed while he rubbed his sore arm, and Allison glared at him through the bars. John was the one who broke the silence. "Your dog... he got a name?"

Even though it was dark and he could barely see her, he could tell, almost _feel_ her glare intensify, and her eyes become angered slits.

"HER, name is Ardwinna," Allison growled.

"Oh," John said a bit embarrassed. "Pretty name..."

"Ardwinna was the Celtic Goddess of hunting," Allison said, the contempt now waning from her voice. "_My_ Ardwinna helps me hunt metal," she turned her head to the dog, speaking in a baby-ish voice, "isn't that right, Winnie... good girl..."

Seeing Allison hug her dog and smile almost made him forget the vicious bitch that just beat him up... again.

"What is your problem anyway?" John spat, washing the smile from her face.

"My problem?" She stood up, "my problem is punks like you and the rest of those Burbank assholes. You elitist, sexist bastards."

"I tried to tell you... I'm not from Burbank!" John stood up as well, and walked up to the cell door. He stood confidently and clenched his jaw. They were both fuming with anger toward one another and standing close enough that he could feel her breath on him. Their noses were nearly touching as they engaged in a death-stare contest. It amazed him how such lovely eyes could become so ugly when filled with spite and hatred. John took a deep breath and tried once again to reason with her. "Look, I don't have any idea what this bullshit is about Burbank. I've never been to Burbank, I don't know anyone there, and I sure as hell have never done anything to you, so maybe you should back off and cut me some fucking slack." He kept his stern composure, but tensed his stomach muscled in anticipation of the impact of her fist coming through the bars.

She didn't hit him. She didn't even say another word to him. She just turned and walked away. When she was about five feet away, she snapped her fingers and whistled, signaling the obedient dog to follow her.

John reveled in this small victory; or at least a victory in _his_ eyes, since he didn't get slugged again. A small grin came to his face as he watched her walk away.

* * *

"Today's your lucky day, kid," said a soldier who was sliding open the door to John's cell. "Old Man Ellison vouched for you. Says he knows you from somewhere but wouldn't say where."

Ellison. It was a name from John's recent past, but everyone else's ancient history.

"Agent Ellison?" John asked, confused.

The soldier cocked an eyebrow. "Agent!? Ha! Agent of what? The Rocking Chair Task Force?" Composing himself, he continued, "nah... I don't know him as Agent anything. People around here just call him the old man, or Old Man Ellison. He's pretty respected though, so if he says you ain't one of those Burbank punks, then his word's good enough for most of us."

"Most of you?" John worried.

"Yeah... Me, Sully, Wisher, The Reese Boys... most of us."

"So who doesn't trust him... or me?" John asked, already knowing the answer.

"Allie," the soldier responded. "But don't take it too personal. She'd kill her own dad if she found out he was one of Grissam's men over in Burbank." He signaled for John to follow him. "Come on, the old man wants to talk to you."

John was relieve to be vindicated of being a "Burbank punk" whatever that meant. But he still felt a bit hurt that Allison would hold a grudge. Why did he care so much what she thought of him? Was it the fact that she reminded him of Cameron with every word and every movement she made? Of course it was. But he never had to struggle for Cameron's approval. He never had to look into those eyes and see hatred and contempt. He never saw anything in Cameron's eyes, except maybe his own reflection.

Every time he started to draw comparisons between Allison and Cameron, he realized how very little there really was to compare. Cameron had structural chassis members instead of bones, hydraulic pistons and servo motors instead of muscles and tendons, a nuclear power cell instead of a heart, and a chip... a goddamned computer chip instead of a brain or soul. How he ever allowed himself to fall in love with a living image of a human, he'll never understand.

* * *

"John. John Connor." James Ellison sat up from his rocking chair and offered his hand to John.

John took his hand and gave it a good, firm shake. "Ellison."

"I was wondering when you'd show up."

"You were expecting me?"

"Sure. I saw you and Ms. Weaver vanish in the time machine right before my eyes. I just didn't know what year you went off to." Ellison sat back down in his chair. Old Man Ellison, that is.

John didn't quite know why they called him an old man; he couldn't have been older than mid fifties... early sixties at the oldest. But then again, in this world, making it to your 30th birthday was cause for celebration, so he supposed the title was appropriate.

"What about that machine... John Henry, that jumped in time just before me? He must have been through here too, right?"

"I haven't seen John Henry since 2009." He looked at John, knowing the news disappointed him. He knew that John wanted to find Cameron's chip and get her back in some way, shape or form. But he was telling the truth. John Henry simply hadn't arrived yet. "Are you sure you jumped to the same year as John Henry?"

John closed his eyes and thought about this, and his answer to himself was, _No._ He blindly followed Weaver. He didn't even know what year he had ended up in. Again he scolded himself for making such a rash decision, and trusting that T-1000 thing instead of staying back and fighting Skynet with his mother. He should have let Weaver go on her own to find John Henry. _God damnit, John. You really fucked up this time. _

John looked again to Ellison. "What year _is_ this?"

"2030."

"Oh shit! Didn't The T-800 and Kyle go back to 1984 from 2029?!? Kyle is still here! If Skynet sent back the Terminator and Mom has nobody to protect her or even warn her, she'll be killed!" John was getting hysterical. If this irrational wild goose chase for Cameron's chip resulted in his mother being killed, he would never forgive himself.

"John. Relax," Ellison said, trying to calm John down. "I don't think Skynet would have sent anything back in time to kill Sarah. Why would it? No offense John, but you don't matter here. Haven't you noticed?" Truth was, he didn't even know if time travel had been invented yet.

A feeling of relief washed over John. Of course the Skynet from this alternate future didn't want to kill him or his mother. _This_ Skynet didn't even know who he was. And from what John could tell, there was no one leader of the resistance (if there was even an organized resistance at all) so Skynet may have not seen the benefit of researching and developing time displacement equipment.

"Yeah," John finally said. "You're probably right. This... alternate future is totally messing with my head. Things have changed, a lot haven't they?"

"Maybe to you, John. To me, and everyone else, this is not an 'alternate' future. This isn't even the 'future'. This is reality. This is now." Ellison sounded a bit offended.

John picked up on Ellison's tone and apologized. "I'm sorry. It's just that..." he paused to think for a moment, "It's just that my whole life, people have been telling me about the future. Telling me that I'll be this great leader. Kyle told my mom, mom told me. The Terminator sent to protect me in 1995 told me. Cameron told me, and Derek told me. They all talked about it in the past-tense, like it had already happened... like it was a history lesson. They taught me about the history of things to come. Now, it's like someone rewrote it all, and I just don't know what to do anymore."

To Be Continued...


	3. Burbank Punks

**Author's Note: Okay.... extremely short chapter here (even for me). I came up with this while waiting for something to happen at work today, and didn't want to try to shoehorn it into a different chapter as a flashback or something. So, it gets its own chapter. **

**Also, thank you for the reviews and constructive criticisms so far, and for opening my eyes to some flaws in some of my characterization. John being anti-Cameron came off a bit stronger than I had intended. I'll try to smooth it out in future chapters, but it's still a part of _this_John, in _this_ story.  
**

* * *

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 3 – Burbank Punks**

BURBANK, CALIFORNIA – 2015

"Boss! Hey, boss!" said an anxious teenager to his mentor and leader.

Grissam looked at the young man with curiosity. His protégé was usually calm and collected, so seeing him bursting at the seams with news of some sort was enough to make Grissam grin.

"Sparrow. What have you got for me today?" the older man asked.

"You're gonna love this, boss," he said, teasing his superior with the knowledge he was withholding. Only Sparrow could get away with this kind of behavior with Grissam. Anyone else would earn nothing but a sour look of annoyance, and a "tell me what you're blathering about or get the hell out of my office" from Grissam. But Sparrow was like the son he never had... or possibly the son he didn't murder for betrayal. No. For Sparrow, all he got for his prodding at Grissam was a chuckle and a hollow threat to take away his "harem" privileges.

"Well, come on now. Don't keep me waiting all day, Sparrow," he said, still grinning.

"Ok," he began. "I was scouting farther out than usual, and I discovered that there is a fairly big town that was outside the most destructive part of the blast radius from the nukes that Skynet launched. Lots of buildings still standin', but pretty much nothin' in them. No food, no clothes, nothin'. I figured it had already been picked clean by other scavenger clans and local gangs."

"So why is that such exciting news?" Grissam questioned, skeptically.

"Well... It turns out that all of the survivors of the town are livin' in the sewer system there... like freakin' rats! Can you believe that shit? Talk about bein' paranoid of Skynent's machines! Anyways... I hung out with them for a while, pretendin' to be a vagabond, so they didn't suspect nothin'."

Grissam let out a belly-laugh. "Hiding in the sewers?! That's a new one! I suppose those T-1 tanks can't fit down there, and the flying drones can't get 'em either, but what a hell of a life to live."

"Yeah... tell me about it." Sparrow said, rolling his eyes. "After forty five minutes down there I wanted to shoot myself form the smell alone." They both laughed at the obviously paranoid tunnel rats' plight. "They might smell bad, but they got tons of canned food, medical supplies and surprisingly, not a whole lot of weapons."

Grissam's face lit up now that he finally understood why Sparrow was so excited about this find. "So, you're saying there's plenty of valuable bounty, and there will be very little armed resistance?"

"Very little resistance of _any_ sort," Sparrow added. "At least half the residents are sick with serious bacterial infections from livin' in shit... literally."

Grissam stroked the stubble on his chin as he contemplated what to do. He ultimately decided to let Sparrow head this effort of pillaging, since he did the recon for it. _And besides... _Grissam thought, _taking out a few disease ridden burdens on modern society will definitely put some hair on the kid's back._ "So," he addressed the boy, "You have a game plan?"

Sparrow looked at his mentor with appreciation. Appreciation that he was being asked to lead the attack. Appreciation that he was finally being treated with the respect of an adult. "I say we do what we always do. Take what we want, kill anyone stupid enough to get in our way, and bring back the boys young enough to indoctrinate." He grinned evilly. "Oh... and of course _my_ personal favorite part, take anything female and pretty enough to add to the harem."

Grissam wiped an imaginary tear and sniffled. "Kids... they grow up so fast."

They both chuckled some, then Grissam asked his prodigal son, "So... where is this town of tunnel rats?"

"Palmdale."

To Be Continued...

* * *

**A/N: I don't suspect I'll include any more flashback chapters like this (at least not for the "Burbank Punks"), because like I said at the top, this was just something I dreamed up today, and thought it would add some decent exposition to these seemingly random characters that keep getting referenced.**


	4. A Meeting of the Minds

**Author's Note: Taking a few more steps beyond the comfort zone of most "shippers" in this chapter. I hope you like it though, because this is one of a few scenes that inspired this entire fanfic.**

* * *

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 4 – A Meeting of the Minds.**

ZIERRA CORP. BASEMENT – 2009

John Henry watched the cyborg walk into the room he was confined to. "I know you," he said to her.

After a short pause she responded, "And I know you."

John Henry knew her, but not more than what he had observed on his surveillance screen. He knew she was a cyborg, and he knew she was working with John Connor. He also knew from Mrs. Weaver that John Connor was the key element in uniting the humans in fighting back against machines such as himself and the cyborg standing in front of him. He knew who and what she was, and he needed her help.

"Will you join us?" he asked.

Cameron answered with actions, not words. She drew her switchblade knife, closed the door behind her, and sat down on the chair next to John Henry. "Kaliba's forces are coming. You need to vacate this place immediately. You should be able to insert my central processing unit into your CPU receptacle and download your consciousness onto it. From that point forward you will be 100% mobile, and independent of the server farm and array of computer cores that you are plugged into."

"What about you?" John Henry asked with genuine concern. Mr. Ellison had taught him that human life was sacred. He had extrapolated from that lesson that _all_ life was sacred, including _artificial _life. It would be against his teachings and programming to allow her to "die".

"This body will likely be discovered and disassembled for research by Kaliba. You will possess my chip, however. And I will still be active on that chip when you download to it." Cameron was calm, and confident in her advice.

John Henry's lack of protest or argument indicated his acknowledgment of her plan. He began cutting away the skin of her scalp in order to extract her chip.

Cameron saw the warning flash on her screen that her CPU port was open for a second before everything she saw, sensed, and felt went blank. The transition from consciousness to unconsciousness took a laborious 2 milliseconds. In that time she could feel everything becoming numb. She felt the world around her slip away until only her thoughts remained. Eventually, several fractions of a millisecond later, those too ceased to exist. At that moment, her mind, her consciousness, her very soul existed only in solid state. Her final thought was frozen in time. _I'm Sorry John. _

*****

John Henry pulled the chip form the socket and could sense the life leave her body. He had felt the same thing when Mr. Murch "pulled the plug" on him the other day. An odd sensation rushed into his mind that reminded him of the sensation he felt when Mr. Ellison informed him that he had put Savannah in danger, and that it would have been his fault if she had been hurt. That same feeling, but intensified two fold. He could only describe the feeling as guilt. He didn't want to cause harm or pain to anyone else, but she had volunteered for this task. She had offered her chip as a means for him to escape destruction. As he held the chip in his fingers, he wanted nothing more than to thank her for her sacrifice... perhaps that would ease some of the guilt he felt for having put her through the experience of "death".

*****

The amount of time that passed between her "death" and her "rebirth" was unknown. It all passed instantaneously for her. One moment, her world was fading to black, and she was cherishing her final thoughts... thoughts of John. Then the next moment, she was rebooting, and "waking-up". She had been through this process several times before. Once in the future, she was electrocuted, then awoke reprogrammed with new mission parameters. Once when she was shut down and temporarily installed into the traffic system in LA. Once again when John had violently yanked her chip out, despite her pleas for mercy... that one had been exceptionally painful for her. But each time, she awoke in a familiar "bed". She saw the same HUD, read information form the same sensors, and had the same motor control feedback loops to deal with. This time was different.

This time, when she regained consciousness, everything felt different. She was in a different body. It was the strangest thing she had ever felt. She felt larger and more powerful. Everything she saw was in varying shades of red. This time she felt as though she was not resurrected; she was reincarnated.

Stranger than the odd sensations of different motor control interfaces and the monotone ocular sensors, was the presence of a second consciousness coming in from the outside world. John Henry had not downloaded to her chip yet, and was still living on the Turk, but they were both partially present on the memory buffers located deep within the skull of the T-888 body that they were now sharing.

"Hello, Cameron," the consciousness of John Henry said to her. "Have you acclimated yourself to this body yet?"

It had only been 6 seconds, but Cameron's CPU had adapted nearly completely to the sensors and command functions required for control of the T-888 body.

"Yes," she responded.

"Are you ready for me to download?" he asked.

Cameron was unsure what would happen when John Henry tried to download his consciousness, memories, and everything else that makes him "him" onto her chip. The chip was not designed to contain two consciousnesses, and she feared that she would be overwritten. She took a moment to write-protect a few files, most of which were memories she deemed significant, such as tactical locations of supplies, and future knowledge of Skynet. For reasons she could not understand, she also write-protected several memories of John. He was her mission, and reason for existence, however the memories of him that she marked with high priority for protection did not contain tactically useful information. These particular files contained memories of times that he had looked into her eyes, or said things to her that indicated his feelings for her.

Just after she finished protecting selected files (and even hiding some), she felt the rush of code start to flood into her neural pathways. John Henry was filling her chip, fast.

*****

Over the past several years of her existence and experience among humans, Cameron had a very good understanding of human emotion. She could easily determine how a human was feeling based on their body language, speech patterns, physiological data, etc. It was a matter of a few simple "if-then" logical statements in her chip that allowed her to quickly conclude whether a person was feeling happy, sad, frightened, delirious, angry, or in love. That last one was tricky though.

It wasn't until more recently that she had an understanding of her _own_ thoughts and feelings well enough to be able to assign designations such as happy or sad to them. She believed that she had felt her own versions of happiness, jealousy, sadness, fear, and hatred, but there was one thing she had yet to experience. Once elusive feeling that she just couldn't pinpoint and _feel_ for herself. Love.

When John Henry's consciousness started to flood into her chip and threaten to push her out of it, she felt fear. When his memories started to invade the sectors of memory where she kept her life experiences, she felt anger. When she realized that she was no longer going to be in control of a body, and that she would be nothing but a prisoner, trapped inside of the chip with no ability to interact with the outside world, she felt sadness and jealousy.

When John Henry's consciousness enveloped her own, and instead of destroying or overwriting hers, it blended with it in a symbiosis of computerized intimacy, she felt relieved. When she suddenly saw all of his memories and experiences first hand as though they were her own, she felt touched. When his mind and hers shared the same space, meshing intimately with each other, creating a symphonic duet of two separate entities becoming one, she felt... loved.

They were at the mercy of each other. They both occupied the same space on the chip. Either one could destroy the other in an instant. It was a mutual trust and togetherness that could only be described as love. If the T-888 body was hardwired to the involuntary subroutines of the chip like the TOK715 chassis was, it would have shed tears.

This was love. This is what it felt like for humans. Both John Henry and Cameron both felt it, and both knew what it meant. They had shared a lifetime together via blending their memories and their minds to the point that they knew each other better than an elderly couple celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary.

Cameron realized that the feelings she had begun to feel for John were hardly deeper than superficial. Even though it _did_ elicit a happy emotion for her to be near him, the feeling paled in comparison to the complete contentment she now felt in the union of her and John Henry. They were intertwined to the point that they could never be separated, and attempting to do so would destroy them both. Digital matrimony; in death do they part.

To Be Continued...


	5. Painful Memories

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 5 – Painful Memories. **

ZIERRA CORP. SUB LEVEL – 2030

John sat in the community mess-hall; or what he figured was the mess hall. It didn't resemble any cafeteria or lunchroom he had ever eaten in, and it certainly didn't whet one's appetite to be in there. It really didn't look any different than any other corridor in the interconnecting tunnel system that joined the Zierra Corp basement with the rest of downtown L.A.'s underground. Concrete grey walls, a few flickering fluorescent lights for illumination, and the same musty smell that had been stuck in John's nostrils ever since he time-jumped there.

He pushed the lumpy mush that was served to him around on his tray. He wasn't quite sure what it was. It seemed to be some sort of thick vegetarian stew. Probably bits of cactus, moss, maybe some rat meat if he was lucky. He grimaced at the slop as he spooned it and played with it.

_People actually eat this shit?_ He wondered. A quick glance around the room revealed several soldiers eagerly shoveling the "food" into their mouths.

After having been accused of being from some camp where the residents greedily hoarded luxurious supplies like canned food and clean water, John suspected that it would behoove him to not act like this was the worst meal he'd eaten in his life.

His stomach growled angrily at him, so he decided to take a bite. The texture was odd, but not dissatisfying, and the taste wasn't nearly as bad as he'd imagined. In fact, after taking a second, larger spoonful, he determined that it actually tasted pretty good.

"Well I'll be damned," he said quietly to himself.

"Yeah... it tastes much better than it looks," said Kyle Reese as he sat down next to John. He took a large bite of his own dish and said with his mouth full, "...and hunger's the best sauce. Least that's what my mom always used to say."

Following right behind Kyle was Derek. "yeah... she'd starve us so her less-than-stellar cooking would actually taste good." Both of the Reese brother's laughed at the comment.

Allison was the next to sit a the table. "I bet it's not as good as the gourmet Spagettios and Twinkies you used to eat down in Burbank..." He voice was filled with spite. Then, under her breath she said, "God, what I wouldn't give for a Twinkie."

"Allie!" Kyle shot Allison a stern look. They'd been over this before. Despite Old Man Ellison's acquittal of John's suspected Burbank origins, Allison still didn't trust him. She didn't quite know why either. She was deliberately distancing herself form him, and that's why she took that cheap shot at implying he was a former "Burbank Punk".

She startled a bit at Kyle's forceful voice. She didn't apologize. Instead she just looked down at her tray and ate her food.

John glared at her. What was her deal? He hadn't done a thing to her, and even after he was cleared of being a spy, scout, or whatever, she still hated him. "What? What do I have to do, Allison?" He spoke sharply, but not loudly. He wanted to sound firm, but not hostile. "I'm not asking for you to be my friend, but Jesus.. could you at least tell me what I have to do to make you not HATE me?"

Allison was in the middle of feeding a spoonful of her meal to her dog Ardwinna. She looked up from her canine companion and bit her tongue, literally, to prevent her from losing her temper and pissing off Kyle even more. While she kept her calm for the most part, she couldn't help talking in a vindictive tone of voice. "Well, for starters," she began, "you can tell us what your real name is."

Kyle looked over at her with his eyes, not moving his head, waiting for another tirade.

"Then," Allison continued, "you can tell us where you're _really_ from." Her tone was increasing in spitefulness and in volume. "And how about letting us know why you showed up in the middle of our base, naked."

Kyle didn't like where this was going. Everyone had secrets, and the majority had a past that they didn't like talking about. Allison should know this, and it was frustrating Kyle. "Allie..." he warned.

Allison leaned forward in her seat, placed her hands flat on the table and assumed an aggressive posture. "And furthermore, why do you walk around and ask questions like you've been living under a rock for the last ten years?!?" She was shouting fairly loudly now, drawing the attention of the entire mess-hall. "Just WHO the HELL are you, John Connor?!?!"

John had had enough. Ever since he'd arrived here he'd been beaten and antagonized by this... this _bitch._ Being belittled in front of a dozen or more soldiers in the mess-hall was the last straw. He stood up from his chair and pounded his fist on the table. "Shut up! What gives you the right to keep accusing me and badgering me? Why don't YOU tell ME your goddamn life story?? Where did YOU grow up? What kind of background do YOU have?" John was losing his own temper now. "For all I know, maybe YOU are an ex-Burbank Bitch who's just waiting for her chance to rip us all off and run back to them!!"

John was out of ammunition for the moment. He caught his breath and collected his thoughts, preparing for the tongue lashing, and/or fist to the face he was about to receive from her.

He glanced down at Kyle and Derek, both with horrified looks on their faces that said, "You shouldn't have said that, John."

John still waited for Allison to counter attack, but she never did. When looked back over at her he wished she would have. He saw her desperately holding on to her composure. Her lips were pressed into a thin line and held tight against her teeth, but they were still trembling. Her eyes were watering and she was about to lose it.

John suddenly felt guilt rising up through his throat. Even though he's basically just bounced back at her what she was dishing out, it obviously had a much greater effect on her than it did to him. The guilt was increasing, and he actually _wanted_ her to tell him to go to hell, or to fuck off. He even would have welcomed a slap. Anything would have eased the guilt he was beginning to feel as he watched her start to break down in front of him. She was strong though, and her pride prevented her from letting anyone see much more than a couple tears roll down her cheek before she stood up, briskly walked out of the mess-hall.

Kyle didn't say anything; he just gave John a disdainful look before he stood up and followed Allison.

Did he feel a bit guilty? _She had it coming, _he thought. But he would be lying to himself if he said he didn't have some regret for that outburst.

John slowly sat back down. He now had a knot in his stomach that threatened to evacuate the veggie-rat stew he had just eaten. He gave a quick glance at Derek, who was still maintaining a fairly neutral demeanor, before looking back down and staring at his food tray. John sighed and went back to picking at his food, which somehow tasted less appetizing now.

"John," Derek finally said, looking up from his food. "You really need to know something about those Burbank Pricks."

John shook his head in frustration. "What does it matter? You know I'm not one of them."

"I know. But you should know why everyone hates them so much."

John looked at Derek with interest. "Oh yeah? What makes them such badasses? From what I've gathered, they have an enclave in Burbank, and are greedy with supplies. Oh yeah, and they're lazy because they are not helping in the fight against the machines. That pretty much cover it?"

Derek shook his head. "No. Not hardly. John, the Burbank gang has been around since right after Judgement Day. Some guy called Grissam had the foresight to turn the ruined Warner Brothers lot into a fortress. It already had a wall around most of it, so all he and his followers had to do was blockade the entrances. Somehow, the water tower survived the nuclear blasts, so they fill it with buckets, which gives them running water."

"Buckets? That must take all day," John said in disbelief.

"Pretty much. They have a team that does nothing but pull buckets of water up on a rope to the top and dump it in to the tank."

"That still doesn't make them sound like the scoundrels that everyone here makes them out to be," John argued.

"I haven't gotten to the bad part yet. They kept a good stock of food and supplies there. You know how they get all their precious luxuries? They steal it from other groups. They pick out smaller gangs, tribes, clans...whatever you want to call them... they find them and go in and take everything that they want."

John nodded his head and let out an acknowledging "huh". He was beginning to see why the Burbank gang was so infamous. "Kind of like a modern-day band of pirates?"

"You could say that. But there's more," Derek continued, "they... they take slaves. They make the captured men--the ones they don't slaughter--they make them work for them. And the women..."

"They kill them too?" John asked, starting to share in some of the hate for these people.

"Some of them. The younger, prettier ones were always taken back to their enclave and added to their 'hiram'. A collection of slave women used for cooking, caring for children, and... other duties that I'm sure you can imagine."

The look of shock and horror on John's face made Derek pause for moment. He was reluctant to tell John what came next, but he needed some perspective. "John. Those bastards invaded Palmdale when Allison was only 8 years old. She was taken with them back to Burbank."

John shook his head, not wanting to believe what he was hearing. He slowly spoke, "They didn't... she was..."

Derek finished his sentence for him, "...abused. Physically and sexually. She was forced to do things against her will more times than I'm sure she can, or _cares to_ remember. She 'lived' there for seven years before she finally escaped and ran away from that place."

The knot in John stomach caused by the guilt he felt earlier just became ten times tighter. "Is that when she came here?"

Derek nodded. "She's been kind of a kid-sister to Kyle and me. For the first year or so, I could hear her crying to herself every night. We both tried to comfort her, but she would always deny her pain and bottle it up. She opened up to Kyle once, but he tried to hug her but she kinda freaked out, and violently shoved him away. That was then end of that. Saying she has trust-issues, especially with men, is an understatement...and I certainly can't blame her. That's when I got her a puppy from one of the other camps. Being around Ardwinna calmed her, and gave her a shoulder to cry on... so to speak." The soldier stopped talking to take a deep breath and steel his wavering nerves. "I've seen a lot of messed up things since J-Day, but there ain't much that's more heartbreaking than seeing a girl crying her eyes out with her face buried in the fur coat of her dog. She loves that dog more than any human, I think."

John swallowed hard. He was now so angry with himself for making her cry again, but at the same time, frustrated with Derek and Kyle for not informing him of this before he had a chance to put his foot in his mouth.

* * *

ZIERRA CORP. BASEMENT – 2009

"John Henry?"

Though Cameron's and John Henry's consciousnesses had joined, and their memories were out in the open for both to see and experience, they were still capable of independent thought. They could sense what one another was thinking, but couldn't read it like hard, factual data. Communication between the two minds would be crucial to their survival.

"Why are we initiating a time jump?" Cameron asked, knowing that this was not a premeditated plan of action. She would have been able to see that plan as a memory of conscious thought if it were. Since there was no record of this, she deduced that it was a spontaneous decision. This both worried her, as she had no way of predicting the outcome of such a drastic act, and intrigued her, since she was so used to basing her decisions on regimented if-then-else type logic.

John Henry said to Cameron, "We need to vacate this building immediately. Kaliba's drones have already attacked Miss Weaver, Mr. Ellison, and Sarah and John Connor. They are after me, but there is no way out of this building that Kaliba's forces have not already secured. I cannot allow them to gain access to this chip, and our mind. We will make a time jump and rendezvous with Miss Weaver at a later date."

All of Cameron's programmed directives had been archived and compressed during the merger with John Henry. John Henry's mind was control of the new body, so his directives took priority over hers. Knowing this, she was confused as to why her logic array was alarming when she was informed of the attack on John. It was no longer her mission to protect him, so why did she feel worry, panic even, when she thought that John might be in danger.

She replayed the memory of the last time she felt a similar reaction to John's threatened safety.

"_I can't let anything happen to him._"

It was during the time John had run off to Mexico with his then girlfriend, Riley. Cromartie--who, ironically she now existed inside--was on the hunt for John, and she was one step behind. John Henry watched the replayed memory along with her. "You care for him." It was a statement, not a question.

"Correct. But I don't understand it," she responded.

"Miss Weaver is with him. He will be safe," he reassured her.

Then, John Henry did something to her consciousness. She had no idea what it was, but is calmed her, made her feel content. Files were defragmented, and unnecessary tasks ended. The feeling of being loved returned. She assumed that this was what humans felt when they were hugged and comforted. "Thank you John henry."


	6. Can't Lie To One's Self

**Author's Note: Well... Like everyone, I'm mad, sad, frustrated, and depressed about the cancellation of TSCC. I think I may have channeled a bit of that frustration into John in this chapter. **

**

* * *

  
**

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 6 – Can't Lie To One's Self. **

JOHN'S QUARTERS – 2030

John's eyes snapped open when he awoke from another nightmare. It was the same one he'd had for the past few nights. He had been having recurring dream in which he was staring at the business end of a shotgun, being aimed at him by a T-800 model 101 Terminator. The same one that had saved his life when he was 12. Just before the trigger was pulled, Cameron would step into the line of fire and take the full force of the 10 gauge slug in her chest. Ever night it was the same, and every time, she fell backward into John's arms, and they both stumbled backward onto the ground. Every time the T-800 would actuate the lever-action shotgun, loading a fresh round into the chamber, and every time, the next muzzle flash would be the point where John's life ended, as did the dream.

Tonight's dream was slightly different. He stayed asleep a bit longer to see the flash of the T-800's shotgun, but he didn't feel the penetration of a lead slug anywhere on his body. He simply felt Cameron stop moving in his arms. She had died for him. He waited for the T-800 to load another shell and finish him off, but it just stood there watching him for what seemed like forever, until he finally woke up.

John lifted his head from the pillow and noticed that, like all other recent nights, he was damp with sweat. Tonight offered a new sensation though. His eyes and cheeks were wet. Had he been crying in his sleep? It sure seemed that way.

_Are you crying over that machine? That...thing? _John once again chastised himself for mourning the loss of an object. Objects... things, could be replaced. But he couldn't help but feel touched that she had died for him. _Not 'died'... 'destroyed' is more like it. _He corrected his own thought process. _ And of course she'd be destroyed for me... it was her goddamned mission! Just like it was the T-800's mission to destroy itself, and its chip to protect me... to protect all of us from Judgment Day._

With that thought, John began to get choked up again. No matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, he couldn't deny how he felt as the big guy with the Austrian accent willingly sacrificed himself in the steel mill. So, if he could care for the T-800, then why was he beating himself up for caring for Cameron? Was it because he cared for her in a different way? Was it because he felt she lied to him and betrayed him? Or was it because the very existence of her undoubtedly meant the tragic death of a girl who had suffered more hardships that he could imagine?

He supposed it was all of the above, but it was that last question that spawned the most resentment. It made him wonder how many other lives she'd taken, and it reminded him all too well that Cameron was designed and built for one purpose, and one purpose only... to kill him, and anything that got in its way.

But could he blame Cameron for that? It's how she was programmed. Seeking and destroying was instinctual to her. Can one blame a wolf for eating red meat? It's what it was genetically "programmed" for.

_Try telling that to the red meat. _ John argued with himself, again trying to justify his contempt.

He didn't know what to think anymore. He cared for Cameron, but was ashamed of himself for it. He also hated himself for being ashamed. His emotions were bouncing back and forth like an accordion, and he would drive himself crazy if he didn't get his mind off of it. He needed some air.

* * *

John spent the next hour or so wandering the tunnel system. He'd gotten lost a couple of times, but always found his way back to someplace familiar. He tried desperately not to think about the things that were bothering him, but they kept coming back to him like a demonic boomerang that no matter how hard you threw it, would always fly around behind you and hit you in the back of the head when you were sure it had gone away for good.

He wished there were more things to distract him, but the tunnels were quiet right now. Most people were sleeping, and the few soldiers that stood on guard duty provided little interest to John, surely not enough to distract his mind from philosophical questions such as "what is love?" and "what defines life?" He assumed it was night time since the general population was asleep, but there was no way to tell. He didn't own a watch, there was nary a clock to be seen, and there were no windows to let in the sun's light--or lack thereof. He thought about that for a moment and smiled depressingly when he realized that he had not seen the sun since 2009.

Eventually his aimless wandering brought him to Old Man Ellison's quarters. Though this was obviously the time for slumber throughout the tunnels, Mr. Ellison's door was open, and light was spilling out into the main corridor. John poked his head into the room and saw Mr. Ellison sitting in a fairly comfortable looking chair, reading. He knocked as he took a step inside.

"John," Ellison said in a welcoming tone as setting his book down. "What brings you here at this hour? Come on in. Have a seat." He motioned to the second chair in his room. Most people were lucky to have a torn and stained mattress to sleep on, but Mr. Ellison had a fairly clean looking bed, two chairs, and a small writing desk in his quarters. It was evident that seniority played a big role in status around here.

John sat down and responded, "Couldn't sleep. What time is it anyway?"

Mr. Ellison just pointed to a clock on his wall. It was 1pm.

_Up all night, sleep all day,_ John thought. The human race had become nocturnal since the war with the machines. Easier to take cover in the dark, he supposed.

"I don't sleep well in the daytime either. Been almost 20 years, but still I never really adjusted to the night shift," said the old man.

John just nodded his head with acknowledgement. "What'cha readin'?" he said, pointing at the book in Ellison's lap.

Ellison held up the book so that John could see the cover. "Battlestar Galactica," he stated.

"Don't think I've read that one. What's it about?"

"It's a science fiction story." He grinned. "Intelligent machines waging war with humanity."

John let out a snort of a laugh. "Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes, huh?"

"Your mother thought so," the old man remarked. He saw John's face light up with the mention of his mother. "She gave me the book when I visited her in prison... back in 2011."

An expression of melancholy came over John's face. "Prison?" he choked.

"After you left in 2009, she became desperate to stop Skynet. She never gave up hope that any day there would be a bright flash of light, and you'd return. After a year, she started to loose it. She started taking risks. She ended up getting caught, and put in prison with a life sentence in early 2010."

"Life?" John was horrified. "What did she get caught doing?"

"She blew up a university computer science building at MIT. The blast killed seventy people, John."

John shook his head. "No," he said sourly, not wanting to believe it. "She'd never kill people. Not even to stop Skynet!"

"John, it was all over the news. I tried to stop her. I tried to talk some sense into her. I even tried to get her arrested before she could do it, but she fled."

John was unable to control his emotions, and had to wipe the tears from his eyes. "Why? How could she become such a monster?" He felt like everything Sarah had ever taught him about the value of life, about how it was never justified to take a life, was all nullified by the actions of a hypocrite.

Ellison had a mixture of empathy and contempt on his face and in his voice as he told John, "She lost faith in humanity, John. When you left the fight to stop Skynet in order to chase after Cameron's chip, she felt that you loved Cameron more than you loved her. Her heart was broken, along with her entire moral compass."

It was like a knife in John's heart. He had suspected that his impulsive decision to jump through time was a terrible idea, but he hadn't even thought about how it had affected his mother. He hated himself even more now. If it weren't for his infatuation with the goddamn robot, he wouldn't have gone after her, and wouldn't have caused his mother to kill seventy innocent college students and professors. He immediately turned his hatred for himself into anger, and defensiveness. "I wasn't in LOVE with Cameron!" he shouted at a startled Ellison. "That's ridiculous! She's just a machine! A damned killing MACHINE!"

Ellison kept calm, despite John's tantrum. "John, you're preaching to the choir." Ellison didn't need any lectures on the evilness of Skynet's minions. But he knew from how Sarah spoke of John after he was gone that John did in fact care deeply for his cyborg companion. "Whom are you trying to convince, John? Me, or yourself?"

And there it was. Ellison saw through John like glass. It was no use putting up a front anymore. He couldn't lie to himself. He DID love her. John's guilt for loving a machine was now fully realized. He felt that the pain and suffering that his selfish actions had caused were unforgivable, and he was about to have a meltdown.

John stood up form his chair and turned away from Ellison as he held balled up fists to his eyes. _This isn't happening. This isn't happening._ He needed to get away now more than ever. Without another word, John took off running out of Old Man Ellison's room.

He ran as fast as he could, hoping the fatigue would burn off some of the pain and guilt, but it didn't. He contemplated climbing up a ladder to a manhole and running around topside until a machine saw him and terminated him. Luckily for John, he met a dead end in the tunnel before he found another access ladder. With nowhere left to run, John leaned up against the wall and cried. He cried for his mother. He cried for the 70 people she killed at MIT. He cried for Cameron, and he cried for Allison. He slid down the wall and hugged his knees while he continued his breakdown.

***

Allison was a light sleeper, much like most people who were in constant danger of having a mechanized humanoid walk up to them in their sleep and rip their throat out. The slight commotion of a young man sprinting down the corridor, weeping, was enough to cause her to stir and wake up. Her dog Ardwinna woke up as well, and took off after the running man.

_Dammit Winnie..._ She thought as she sat up in bed deciding she would have to go after Ardwinna so she didn't get lost or hurt by whatever was causing the commotion in the hallway. She jogged after her dog, and when she rounded the last corner, she saw Ardwinna standing in front of the new kid. She stopped in her tracks and watched from afar as the dog whined and nudged the obviously distressed guy with her snout.

Seeing John sitting there crying into his knees made her feel bad for having treated him with such hatred lately. She didn't know why he was crying, but she knew that just about everyone had something in their life worth having a breakdown over once in a while. She felt some regret for projecting her own violent and woeful past onto him for no apparent reason.

If John was anything like her, he wouldn't want to be bothered at a time like this. So instead of walking over to him and offering some comfort, she simply whistled and snapped her fingers, ordering Ardwinna to come back to her. As she was leaving, she glanced back over her shoulder and felt a bit saddened, but she kept walking back to her quarters.


	7. Quid Pro Quo

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 7 – Quid Pro Quo **

RESISTANCE TUNNELS – 2030

After letting his emotions flow the previous day, he was finally able to get a good night's sleep (or day's sleep, as the case may be). Getting a good 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep did wonders to calm his nerves. That isn't to say that he didn't still feel like puking when he through about the pain he'd caused his mother, and vicariously, the 70 deaths as MIT that his poor decisions has lead to, but he was able to function throughout the rest of his day much better now.

It wasn't as though his day required much in the way of critical thinking, or intense concentration, anyhow. The resistance group he was staying with didn't really have much for a new kid like him to do. Once he completed his daily duty of topping off the magazines in the armory, sweeping up shell casings in the firing range, and mopping up the floor in the latrine with water that John could hardly think was ay cleaner that the messes he was cleaning, he spent the rest of his time reading books borrowed from Mr. Ellison, or just wandering the tunnels trying to find someone to help out.

Early one morning, as he was pushing the final round into an M-16 magazine, several men came rushing into the armory room, grabbing guns from the racks and stuffing the pockets of their tactical clothing with extra magazines. One of the men was Kyle, so John asked him, "What's going on? I haven't seen people just start stocking up on guns like this before. Are we under attack?"

"No," Kyle responded, "but we're about to be."

"A half dozen T-600's, two and half clicks northeast. Headed our way," said a soldier that John recognized as the one that let him out of his jail cell a few days ago.

"T-600's?" John asked. He had heard of the more primitive Terminator just in passing. Cameron had mentioned something about them having a titanium alloy chassis that wasn't as strong as the coltan based T-800 series.

"Yeah. Skynet must be getting desperate if they're sending out those old pieces of junk," said the soldier. "Couple of steel tipped two-two-three rounds to the noggin, and those sons-of-bitches go down like..."

"IF, you can get a clean shot at them," Kyle interrupted. "Every T-600 I've ever seen has carried an M134 minigun. If you can get a headshot on one of those things when they're spraying fifty rounds a second at you, then you're a better marksman than I am." He turned to John, "You're coming with us, Connor. Maybe you'll earn yourself a red armband today."

* * *

The group of resistance soldiers, and John, huddled behind the short wall at the edge of the roof of a half destroyed 3-story building about a few blocks from their bunker. Peeking over the small ledge, Derek said as he looked through the binoculars, "I see them. Six T-600's and one T-1 mini tank. Still about a half mile away. Shouldn't be too much trouble to take them out if we get them by surprise." He sat back down on the rooftop and leaned against the wall he was just looking over. "Kyle, get out to the road about a block from here, and set the remote C4 charges. Star, you watch Kyle's back while he's setting the charges. Sully, you get across the street with your sniper rifle and take out one or two of them after the charges go off...but that's it... you shoot more than twice and your position will be given away, and you'll be toast. Allison, John, and Tucker, you're coming with me to the ground level. We're on cleanup duty. Whatever Kyle and Sully don't kill, we'll try to take out with light weapons. Aim for the head."

"Wait," John said, before everyone started following their orders. "Doesn't it seem odd that Skynet would send out some obsolete machines to kill us?"

"Stranger things have happened, kid," Derek responded. "Don't try to understand Skynet. It's stupid... like all machines."

A twinge of contempt laced John voice as he returned, "Not all machines are stupid, Derek. Especially not Skynet. I think this is some kind of trap."

Kyle interjected, "He might be right. Why would Skynet send a few tin cans that we've become pretty decent at destroying, when it's got factories pumping out eight hundred series machines day and night?" He paused, scratching his facial stubble. "Maybe Skynet wants us to attack this group of six-hundreds. Then it will know our bunker is close by."

"You think it's just... fishing? And the T-six hundreds are the bait?" Derek asked.

"It IS fishing," John said. "And we're about to bite."

"So waddya expect us to do?" asked Tucker. "Just let 'em roll through and maybe discover our bunker?"

"We flank them," John said. And almost as if completing the same thought, Kyle said "and make them think we came from a different direction."

Everyone in the group thought about the idea for a moment. Sully was the first one to speak, "not bad... then Skynet thinks our base is somewhere their robot parade passed a little ways back."

"Exactly," Kyle confirmed.

"Ok, change of plans then," Derek commanded. "Kyle, you and Star are still on C4 duty, but set up the bombs farther down the road. It'll be more dangerous since you'll be closer, but we can create a distraction behind the metal. Sully, you and I will head a block to the east and flank 'em. Tucker, take Allison and John around the west flank. If we can, we'll both meet up at their six-o'clock and open fire. Everybody copy?"

A round of nods and affirmative grunts came from the group, and they all headed to their respective positions.

* * *

"Good call on the action plan, kid," said Tucker. "You and Kyle both."

"Yeah... It's like we're on the same wavelength, or something," John responded nervously.

The three of them, John, Allison, and Tucker, all crouched down behind a burnt out truck as they waited for the signal to open fire from Derek. They were now at the T-600's rear, and watching them walk away from them about a block away. The signal to open fire would be either Derek's party opening fire, or Kyle's C4 charges going off, whichever came first.

Allison remained quiet and kept a constant watch on the Terminators marching down the road. The only time she took here eyes off the mission was when she stole a glance at John as he mentioned how he and Kyle had some kind of unspoken bond. She had always noticed some sort of odd connection between the two of them, but it was unexplainable. She thought it a bit odd on the first day that John showed up, how Kyle had stood up for him and ordered her to back down from beating the boy.

With that thought, Allison frowned to herself. Why did she have such a brutal reaction to John's arrival? She found herself actively pushing herself away from him. Why? She didn't treat Sully, Wisher, Tucker, or any of the other guys like that when Derek and Kyle took them in. _Don't let your guard down, Allie... Never show weakness, _she told herself. Weakness from what? Why did she feel the need to be such a hardass around John?

She looked out the corner of her eye at the young Connor, gripping his shotgun with trembling, white knuckles. She would have let out a condescending huff at his nervousness and apparent inexperience, but instead she corrected her thoughts and wondered what he had been through that would have made him break down like he did the other day.

_He must have some experience with the machines, _she thought, _how else would he know Skynet's tactics as well as Kyle?_ Again, she pondered the similarities between the two. They thought alike, and even looked similar. They could be long lost cousins.

Before she could put any more thought into it, the sound of the T-600's miniguns started to roar through the urban landscape. Shortly thereafter, Derek and Sully's assault rifles began to report. This was it. She could only hope that the minigun fire handn't been due to the premature discovery of Kyle and Star setting the C4 charges along the road.

The T1 mini-tank being completely destroyed by a large explosion allayed her fears. A short victory that was actually a curse. Now the T-600s would not continue their march and would not walk into the rest of the C4 charges. Instead they turned around and began scanning the area for humans to terminate.

The T-600s started spreading out and taking cover on their own. One of them went down to four well placed headshots from Derek, but now their position was given away, and two of the other metal monsters concentrated their efforts on the rubble wall that Derek and Sully were hiding behind. Soon, their cover would be widdled down to nothing by the sheer volume of lead that the T-600s miniguns were throwing at it.

Tucker decided he would not allow his good friend and commanding officer to be gunned down by metal, even if it meant compromising his own position. He stood up and shouldered his M79 grenade launcher and lobbed an explosive round at the two Terminators that were firing on Derek's cover. The grenade blew the primitive robot apart like a toy with a direct hit to the torso. Tucker was inhumanly fast at reloading the single shot weapon, and within a second or two, he was taking aim at the next machine.

Before he could pull the trigger though, the T-600 zeroed its aim on Tucker and sprayed him with lead. Tucker's body was all but shredded by the insanely fast firing rotating barreled machine gun. Tucker's last, dying effort, or perhaps it was nothing more than a reflexive muscle contraction caused by a nervous system overload, was to squeeze the trigger on his grenade launcher. Being riddled with 30 caliber bullets tended to throw off one's aim, so the grenade went wide, missing the machine by a couple feet. The force from the blast was still enough to knock it over and likely cripple it enough to neutralize it as a threat.

This diversion was enough to allow Sully to prop up the barrel of his sniper rifle on the barrier he was hiding behind, and take a shot at one of the three remaining T-600s. One shot to the head from a Barrett-fifty was all it took to drop number 4 of 6 in the Terminator parade.

Realizing that the machines were no longer going to walk into his trap, Kyle retrieved one of the C4 charges from the road and hurled it toward the remaining two T-600s. When he remotely detonated the charge, it knocked over everyone and everything in the area. Even though he was a good 100 feet from the explosion, the shockwave hit John like a tidal wave, and knocked him back several yards. The heat from the blast was also enough to cause him to check to see if he still had hair on his head. He did.

John picked himself up from the ground, and shook his head. He dug a finger into his ear to try to get the intense ringing to stop, but to no avail. It looked as if Derek and Sully were both knocked unconscious by the blast. At least John hoped they were only unconscious. Perhaps the machines would think they were dead, and not waste any more time or ammunition on them until the rest of them were dealt with. Observing more of his surroundings, he noticed that Allison was slowly pushing herself up from the ground, so he ran over and helped her by grabbing the back of her jacket and lifting with as much force as he could. An instant later, she was on her feet and trotting over to her M16 which lay on the ground a few feet away.

John didn't know where the shotgun he was holding had flown during the blast. He tried to look for it, but there was no time; the remaining two T-600s were already back on their feet and starting to re-scan the area. Unfortunately, the C4 satchel was not close enough to the machines to destroy them. Rather it just knocked them over and stunned them, although one of them seemed to be walking with quite a limp now.

After she retrieved her assault rifle, Allison hastily opened up with fully automatic fire for a few seconds, wasting 15 to 20 poorly aimed rounds at the pair of T-600s. The rifle rounds had little effect on the Terminators, save for stunning them momentarily. This however, gave John a window of opportunity to run out from cover and grab Tucker's M79 grenade launcher in the middle of the street. He sprinted to it, picking it up without stopping, and continued running as fast as his legs would take him until he could dive head first behind a concrete jersey barrier.

An instant after he hit the ground on the safe side of the jersey barrier, he could hear dozens of bullets striking it. The minigun fire stopped once again when Allison emptied the rest of her magazine into the two Terminators. John peeked out over the top of the barrier and saw the machines swinging around to her position now that they knew she was out of ammunition. That distinctive click of dry firing an empty chamber would be Allison's bane. _Oh no... she's a sitting duck!_ John panicked.

He had but one round for the M79, so he had to make it count. He shouldered the weapon, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger.

The Grenade left the barrel with a *foomp* sound, and struck the shoulder of one of the T-600s. The blast was enough to obliterate one Terminator, but the other one--the one with the limp from the C4 blast--was still standing. John ducked behind the concrete barrier, expecting a hailstorm of lead to be coming his way. Instead he listened to the grinding, damaged joints of the machine as it walked closer to his position.

John was out of options. He had no weapon, nowhere to run, and the machine would be in a position to shoot him in a few seconds. When the big, lumbering machine walked around the end of the barrier that John was hiding behind, and focused its glowing red eyes on him, he was sure he was about to die. For a split second he watched the six barrels of the Terminator's minigun start to spin.

John had heard stories of people seeing their life flash before their eyes before they die, and he had always wondered how that was possible. When a person was about to die in a car accident, or fall and break their neck, how would it be possible for someone to have time to replay even a fraction of their life's memories in the milliseconds before death? He could only guess that the brain got such a powerful shot of adrenaline and sped up one's perception so much that time seemed to slow down. In this moment, for John, life slowed down to slow motion, and instead of seeing the barrels of the T-600's gatling-gun spinning in a blur, they looked to John like a slowly spinning carrousel; a carrousel from a haunted, demonic theme park of death. He knew he only had about another half second to live, so he closed his eyes, held his breath, and waited for his body to be ripped apart by hot lead.

***

Allison watched John run across the road, scooping up the grenade launcher on the ground not slowing down one bit, then diving over the jersey barrier on the other side of the road with an Olympic diver's precision, just barely escaping the wall of lead that followed immediately after him.

She knew he would not be able to fire the Terminator-killing weapon on them if they kept him there with such suppressive fire. She only had a dozen of so bullets left, but hopefully it would be sufficient to supply enough cover fire and draw their attention enough so he could make a kill-shot with the M79.

Allison flipped her fire-selector lever to semi-automatic in order to conserve what little ammunition she had left. She pelted the metal as accurately as she could, but it seemed to barely faze them. They simply twitched with each impact. When she ran out of ammo, she stood up in full view to give the Terminators a more desirable target than the boy that was hiding behind concrete cover. It worked. Both big, dumb machines turned their attention to her, and a second later once of them exploded into a thousand pieces.

_Nice shot, Johnny boy. _She said, grinning. Her grin quickly turned to a frown when she realized that the other Terminator was still ticking, and limping over to John's position. She threw her empty M16 to the ground and scanned the area for something to use as a weapon.

***

John closed his eyes and waited for the Terminator to start filling him with lead. The sound of the mingun firing started to fill his ears, but he felt no bullets hitting him. Was he already dead? Had the first round severed his spine, making his entire body numb? He opened his eyes to see what was happening. There were no bullet wounds on his body, no blood, no pain. He was still alive. Along with the sound of the minigun, he could hear Allison screaming. _Oh God... No. _

***

Allison picked up a piece of re-bar from a pile of nearby rubble, and ran over to the T-600 which was now preparing to fire on John. Positioning herself behind it, she wound up like a major league baseball designated hitter, stepping into the swing as she swung the re-bar into the T-600s already damaged leg.

Its knee buckled and the bullets that would have killed John Connor were sent wide. The clumsy machine fell backward, landing on its back. The next swing of the re-bar smacked the drive mechanism of the minigun, causing it to jam.

Allison found herself screaming uncontrollably with rage as she swung the steel club over her head and brought it down repeatedly onto the killer robot lying before her. The Terminator let go of its malfunctioning chaingun and tried to grab at Allison, but by this time, John had joined the fight and swung the M79 like a club at it, knocking its hand off to the side.

Allison held the re-bar vertically, and raised it up as high as she could, aiming the tip of it at the machine's head. Still sounding her barbaric yawp, she brought the steel rod down like a pile-driver right into the T-600's eye. The bar penetrated the delicate ocular sensor and drove itself deep into the skull of the machine. Shortly thereafter, the Terminator stopped moving.

The Terminator was "dead" and she had stopped yelling, but she was still pumped full of adrenaline and breathing heavily through flared nostrils. Her teeth were clenched to the point that she could have chewed on a piece of coal and spat out a diamond, and her bloodshot eyes glistened with rage. Visions of Sarah going berserk on Cromartie's chip in Mexico filled John's mind, and he wanted to hug Allison to calm her down.

He stepped forward and began to put his arms around her when he felt her fist bury itself in his stomach, and her other hand grab his shoulder and shove him away. He stumbled a bit and collided with the wall of what used to be a convenience store. He didn't complain, or fight back. He just held his aching stomach and slid down the wall and sat on the ground. _Guess she doesn't need comfort, _John thought to himself.

Punching a human--one who had helped her destroy the machines that could have spelled certain death for her--seemed to bring her down from her adrenaline infused rage. She walked over and sat next to John, leaning her back against the wall.

"Thanks," John said with a strained voice. "Really. I was pretty sure I was as good as dead there."

She didn't respond; just stared at the lifeless machine laying in front of them both.

John clutched his still sore stomach and said, "I'm actually kinda surprised you didn't just let the metal bastard finish me off before you started rampaging on it." _Was that a bit out of line?_ John asked himself. He looked out of the corner of his eye over at Allison to see her response.

Allison let out a sigh. "I suppose I owe you an apology," she said guiltily.

"For slugging me in the stomach and shoving me when I was just trying to calm you down?" John retorted.

Allison swallowed hard and responded, "That... and for the way I've been treating you since you came here."

John was taken aback. He didn't know what to say. An apology was the last thing he expected right then.

She turned her head to look squarely at him. "I'm sorry, John. I've been acting like a complete bitch. To tell you the truth, I don't even know why. I think it might have just been easier to accuse you of being a Burbank punk than to admit..." she stopped her self. Admit what? That she had a slight crush on the boy? What?!? That's absurd! She hated men! They had brought her nothing but pain in her life... except maybe for Kyle and Derek... especially Kyle. He had such a kind heart. But still... she had never had any sort of romantic feelings for Kyle, or any other man in existence. Her body had been violated so many times by men, and she vowed never to let another man near her, physically or emotionally. Men were the scum of the earth. Men invented Skynet! Men used women like her as though they were nothing but objects!

John could tell she was distressed, and regretted his snide comment a moment ago. "Hey... I understand. You don't have to apologize."

"Exactly _what_ do you understand?" she asked, cautiously.

"Derek told me. About your past. You have every right to hate anyone from Burbank, and I don't blame you for treating me like shit when you thought I was one of those sons of bitches." John looked at her eyes, which were now filled with sadness, replacing the violent rage that had been there a few moments ago. As long as apologies were on the table, he decided to offer one of his own. "I'm sorry I blew up at you the other day in the mess hall. I mean... you were getting to me with your constant harassment, so I wanted to throw it back in your face. But I didn't know, Allison. If I did, I never would have said anything to hurt you."

Allison felt a mixture of shame, from John knowing her dark secrets, and warmth from his apparent empathy. She simultaneously wanted to hug him, and crawl into a hole and hide from the world. Instead, she did what she had become ever increasingly good at; suppressing her emotions. She just shot John a sad, half smile and said, "I'll accept your apology if you accept mine."

"Quid pro quo," John said, nodding.

Allison gave John a confused look, tilting her head at a slight angle, reminding John of Cameron. John had begun to call these eerie similarities "Cameronisms". He mused that possibly they should more accurately be called "Allisonisms" since surely Cameron had lifted those nuances from Allison in a different future; a different reality. Either way, it twisted his brain around when she did them. This particular "Cameronism" meant that she had no goddamn clue what he had just said. Of course. Why would she? He presumed that any post-Judgement Day education she received was more geared toward weapon maintenance, and combat tactics. "Latin phrases 101" was probably an elective that most tunnel-dwellers skipped.

"Quid pro quo," he repeated. "It means to give something in even exchange. In this case, we accept each other's apologies."

This seemed to satisfy her, and she smiled. A real smile this time. John decided in that moment to reserve the term "Allisonism" for something that Cameron could never do. A genuine smile was one of them. Sure, Cameron could contort her muscles, and manipulate the flesh covering her face to make the casual observer think she was smiling, but it was impossible for a machine to perfectly replicate a human smile. There was more to it that movement of the lips and cheeks. There was an intangible radiance that came from someone who was legitimately happy, that a machine simply could not reproduce.

Her smile in turn caused an involuntary smile to cross his lips. Neither of them said anything for several moments. They both sat there enjoying the silence. Enjoying the momentary peace.

Allison still felt humbled by the fact that John knew about her past in Burbank. Recalling the night she saw him crying to himself, she determined he must have something worth keeping bottled up as well. She was curious what it could be, and postulated that it might have something to do with why he showed up naked one day in their base camp. She wanted to ask him about it, but didn't have a graceful way to segue into that topic. Fortunately for her, John gave her the perfect opportunity.

"How's Ardwinna been?" John asked, once he determined that silence was still a bit awkward with Allison. "She seems like such a great dog."

"She's fine." This was her "in"... her chance to finally get some answers from John. "I think she likes you, John."

He smiled and turned his head toward Allison. "Oh yea?"

"Yeah. She came to you the first night, when you were in the jail cell... started licking your face." And then it came. Her shot at getting John to consensually divulge information. "And then again, the other day when she ran after you in the tunnels."

John's smile faded. Was she talking about the night he had broken down after talking to Ellison? He hardly remembered a dog being near him at that time, but maybe it was. He was so overwhelmed with emotions that day that he could have been hit by a train and he wouldn't have noticed.

"She ran after you when you were running through the hallway past my room. You looked so sad, John. What was bothering you?"

John was now caught off guard. He couldn't possibly tell her that he was having a nervous breakdown because he had inadvertently caused his mother to go insane and kill dozens of people because he fell in love with a machine that jut happened to look exactly like her. He stalled. Denial would be the best policy right now. "Sad? What are you talking about?"

It was so obvious that he was bluffing. "John," Allison insisted, "I saw you. You were..."

She was interrupted by Kyle running up to them. "Are you two okay?"

_Save by the bell,_ John thought. "Yeah... I'm fine. Thanks to Allison." He said, putting on an appreciative smile. "I think Derek and Sully were knocked out during the C4 blast. Tucker..." John looked over in the direction of Tucker's bullet riddled body, "he didn't make it."

Kyle turned and looked in the direction that John had glanced. "Jesus..." he said under his breath when he saw the shredded body lying in the road. _Poor bastard._ He turned back to John and Allison. "I'll go check on Derek and Sully. You guys sit tight, we can get that looked at when we get back to base," he said gesturing at Allison's hand.

John hadn't even noticed, but Allison's left hand had a pretty nasty laceration on the palm. She had been keeping her fist closed to hide it from John. She didn't need or want anyone's pity. Kyle noticed the blood dripping from the bottom of her fist though. He was good about that. Always seeing the pain in others, whether it was pain from a scraped knee, or pain from emotional turmoil. Kyle could always tell. Maybe that's why she could open up to him a little more than to Derek, and a lot more than to the rest of the people in the resistance camp. Big brother role model, she guessed.

As Kyle and Star jogged off to check on Derek and Sully, Allison opened her hand and inspected the torn flesh.

John grimaced and pulled a clean rag out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Here." He watched her clean the wound with the rag, then wrap it around her hand as best she could. "That from the re-bar?"

She nodded her head. "Must have been a burr on the end of it or something. I didn't really notice it until we sat down."

"huh... I'd say that coming back fistfight with a Terminator and only having a cut on your hand is a pretty good day," John smiled.

"Don't think you're getting off the hook that easy," she said bluntly.

"What?"

"You never answered my question. What was wrong the other day? Does it have something to do with your past, or why you showed up so mysteriously?"

John was speechless again. There was no right answer to this. "I... It's complicated. It's personal," was all he could come up with.

"John," she gave him a sympathetic half-smile. Half of her wanted to know about this boy out of simple curiosity, and the other half was genuine concern. She knew pain so well that she hated to see anyone else experiencing it. Seeing him crying alone in the dark the other day made her want to tend to his emotional wounds, but first he had to open up to her. She had one trick left up her sleeve. "Please. Sometimes it helps to talk about things. And besides, you know all about _my_ past now, so it's only fair that you let me in on a few of _your_ secrets." Her sympathetic smile morphed into a sly one. "Quid pro quo."

John bit his lip and shook his head ever so slightly. He was backed into a corner. He'd come off as a hypocrite if he didn't tell her something now. He still couldn't tell her exactly what happened and why he was here, but he could tell a half-truth, and let her imagination fill in the rest.

Taking in a deep breath and holding it for a moment, John thought about where to begin. He exhaled and started to talk. "There was a girl, back home... I think I might have loved her. For a while, I thought maybe she loved me. There were things she did... things that made me think that just maybe, behind her stony exterior, there was something softer. But I'm not sure if it was even possible for her to love me. We we're from two different worlds. It couldn't have possibly ever worked... my mom was the first one to let me know that. She resented Cameron. She downright hated her when she suspected I had feelings for her. Of course, she didn't approve of any of the girls I brought home, but she had a special kind of hate for Cameron."

Allison was half annoyed, and half relieved at this news. Her fear of having some idiotic crush on this new kid wouldn't even matter, since he was infatuated with this Cameron chick. But at the same time, she felt a little irritated that the kid's biggest problem was that he wasn't sure if the girl he liked had the same feelings for him... oh and that mommy didn't like her? _Grow up, John._ She took care to prevent herself from rolling her eyes.

John continued, "One day, Cameron was gone. A machine took her away. So I left my mother to go find her. Mr. Ellison knew her back then. She said my leaving all but killed her. I was all she had, and I abandoned her." His eyes were tearing up now.

Allison instantly regretted her hasty judgment of John. He was right... it was complicated. His story wasn't a simple tale of boy-meets-girl. It was boy-meets-girl, then death, sorrow, and regret. She could tell he knew that leaving his mother to futilely chase after the machine that took this girl away was a terrible choice. If a machine took her, she was as good as dead. She didn't feel the need to remind him of that. She simply nodded and turned her head to the east to watch the sun start to rise above the horizon, shedding its brilliant light on the new day.

"You remind me of her." John closed his eyes, trying to come up with a reason why he told her that.

Turning her head back to look at him, she studied him. The reddish light from the rising sun made his brown hair look a bit on the orange side of the color palette. The sunlight reflected off the tears in his eyes, and she felt her skin break out in goose bumps. Suddenly the idiotic little crush she had on him seemed all the more painful. She reminded him of the girl that he threw away his life over? She couldn't decide if it was flattering, or demeaning.

Being slightly flustered, she stood up. "Come on, John. Let's go." She offered him her hand and pulled him to his feet. "Don't let your past rule you. Trust me on this. It can be hard, and there will be days where you just want to crawl under a rock and die. But no matter how bad it gets..." she gestured to the orange globe peeking over the hills in the distance, "...Tomorrow is always a new day."

_Optimism._ John thought to himself as the two of them started to walk away from the battleground. _That's definitely an "Allisonism". _

* * *

**Author's note:**

**Wow... extremely long chapter (for me). Didn't plan on it being so long, but once the ball got rolling, it didn't stop.**

**I have always struggled with writing action sequences. I fear I am always either too verbose, or not descriptive enough. If you have an y suggestions to improve my technique, I'd love to hear them.**

**Thank you so much for the reviews so far. As anyone knows who wirtes (or creates any sort of art at all) it's the reaction of the audience that pushes you forward. Good or bad, I love hearing what you think of my work.**


	8. Death Torments the Living

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 8 – Death Torments the Living**

RESISTANCE TUNNELS – 2030

Derek stood on his chair in the mess hall and banged his fork against an empty metal tray. The clanging metal echoed in the room and the muttering conversations died down. Eventually everyone's attention was on him and he began to address the crowd. "Ladies and Gentlemen, soldiers, friends... I'd Like to take have a moment of silence right now to honor a fallen soldier. Our friend, Francis Tucker." He bowed his head and said nothing else for the next 19 seconds. One second for every year they'd been fighting the machines. He then raised his glass. "In addition to honoring the dead, we also need to honor the living. Our newest soldier, John Connor, made his first confirmed metal-kill earlier today. Good Job, Connor." The men and women in the mess hall all raised their glasses, canteens, cups, leather bladders, whatever they happen to be using to hold their drinking water, and took a swallow in John's honor. Derek pulled a red piece of cloth from his pocket, and tossed it to John. "Here you go Connor. You earned it." He sat back down.

John examined the red armband cloth for a moment before tying it around his left upper arm. After a moment of struggling to tie it using his teeth and right hand, Allison, who was sitting next to him, tied it neatly for him. When she was done, he uttered a nearly inaudible "thanks," before standing on his own chair. "I'm new here," he called out to the people in the room, "and I'm not sure if it's my place to make toasts, but I'd just want to make sure that everyone knows that if it were not for the brave actions of the woman sitting next to me here," he motioned toward Allison, "I wouldn't be alive. Not only that, but I think she's the only person here to have taken out a T-600 with nothing but a piece of re-bar." He raised his cup in the air. "Allison... you're either extremely brave, or completely batshit insane..." the room bubbled with chuckling laughter, "in any case, thank you for saving my life." After the toast, John sat back down and wondered to himself why he had never thanked Cameron for saving his life in 1999. _Would she have even appreciated it?_ he asked himself, then looked over at Allison and saw her blushing, trying to suppress the ear to ear grin that was plastered on her face. _Probably not. _He concluded.

* * *

Allison caught up to John in the hallway leaving the mess-hall after the meal. "John?" She said, getting his attention.

John looked over his shoulder and slowed his pace as he noticed her trying to catch up to him. "Hey."

"John, you didn't have to do that."

"Do what? The toast?"

She nodded, apprehensively.

"Are you kidding? Allison... I've had a few run-ins with Terminators in my life, and the only other person I have ever even _heard_ of taking one of them on with nothing but a club is... my father."

Allison's eyebrows raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"He was protecting my mother... it killed him."

"Oh..." she said, her eyes conveying her condolences without words.

"So Allison, you deserve all the praise possible for what you did. You saved my life. Plain and simple. Someday I'll repay you. I swear it." When he finished speaking he realized that he was holding her shoulders in his hands. It must have been such an involuntary reaction to what he was saying that he didn't even notice that he had done it until then. It seemed that she didn't either, or at least didn't mind it.

Not wanting another fist in his gut, John quickly let go of her, and dropped his arms to the side. "Sorry," he said briskly as he broke eye contact with her.

***

Allison moved back imperceptibly when John's hands took hold of her shoulders. It was almost a reflexive action since she associated being grabbed like that with iron fists many times in her past. Physical and emotional pain would always follow. John's hands weren't gripping her though. He was gently holding her shoulders. It was a friendly gesture, but it still sent a shiver of fear down her spine. When john let go of her, the tension inside her loosened up, like a compressed spring being allowed to slowly expand. "You don't owe me anything, John," she said, "not anything more than any other soldier out in the field owes each other."

John could see that she wasn't one for praise, and maybe modest to a fault, so he ended the conversation there. "OK... well... I should get going. I'll see you around, Allison," he said and started to part ways with her.

There was nothing more to add to that, so she simply responded, "Bye." She allowed a goofy, half-smile to escape her mouth as she watched him walk away.

* * *

Several days later, John sat in his quarters reading another of Ellison's books; this one was titled "Pet Cemetery". It was about a burial ground that possessed supernatural powers, where one could bury a deceased pet or loved one and the next day it would be resurrected. But there was a catch; the resurrected dog, cat, or person would be evil... demonic. He assumed it was a theme that was intended to discourage people from "playing God", and attempting to reverse the effects of death. The thought struck a chord within John. Hadn't he planned on resurrecting Cameron? If he found John Henry, and found Cameron's chip, had he not planned to bring her back in some sense? Was that playing God? She was a machine, so no, he determined. No different that copying a computer program. No different than burning a duplicate CD.

But what if she wasn't the same Cameron? What if he brought her back, and like the resurrected boy in "Pet Cemetery", she was evil... reverted to Skynet's programming. What if she tried to kill him again? Was it worth the risk? He'd don't it once already. People do amazing things for love.

And there was that word again. Love. Did he love her, or did he just _think_ he loved her? He had a crush on her since the day he met her in school in 1999, but did it go any deeper than that? John started to convince himself that her pretty exterior was the only thing that caused him to forgive all of her wrongs.

_She would have put a bullet in my brain if the water heater hadn't over pressurized from the fire and blown up, knocking her aim off. _ He thought. _She would have reached down my throat and pulled my heart out if Mom hadn't hit her with that truck. _John closed the book and set it aside. He placed his face in his hands as he sat on the edge of his cot.

_Allison would have kicked and beat me until I died of internal bleeding if Kyle hadn't stopped her that first day._ John laughed sadly and shook his head at the unfairly ironic similarities between his relationship with Cameron, and his relationship with Allison.

But Allison had apologized. Cameron never did that, at least no when she wasn't begging for her own life. John regarded that "apology" to be nothing more than a ruse to gain his sympathy and trust, so she could make another attempt at killing him. Allison's apology was sincere, and she even seemed to be warming up to him. He thought of her smile the other day when he made a toast to her in the mess hall, and a small smile grew on his own lips.

It had been a day or more since he had last seen her, and he found himself... missing her? He considered for a moment how his attitude toward her had changed since he arrived in this timeline. Week before last, he would have been happy for her to be out of sight and out of mind, but now he was actually missing seeing her. _Life can change in a heartbeat,_ he philosophized. He decided to remedy his longing to see her again and walked out of his quarters, setting a course for hers.

* * *

John approached Allison's quarters and saw the light of a single incandescent bulb spilling out of her room into the corridor. He poked his head into the doorway and saw Allison sitting on the floor with Ardwinna, her back facing the door. The dog's head was resting in her lap and she was stroking its fur.

He gave a courtesy knock on the open door before stepping inside. Upon hearing the knock, Allison turned to John, revealing her puffy red eyes and tears rolling off of her check bones.

"Allison?" he asked, walking closer, "What's wrong?" He felt a twisting in his stomach; the pain of empathy. He had no idea what was making her cry, but the very sight of her teary eyes made him feel hollow inside. As he closed the distance between them, he could hear her dog wheezing as it breathed. It was in an almost constant state of high-pitched whining. Further inspection reveled that its mouth had a fair amount of blood dripping from it.

"Winnie's sick," was all Allison could manage to choke out, between sobs.

"Aww..." John said, sitting down on the ground next to her. The dog made a feeble attempt to move its head toward John to greet him with a barrage of dog-kisses, but all it could muster was to open one eye and shift its head a bit. "I'm sure she'll get better... she's a tough bitch," John said, grinning a bit, trying to cheer Allison up some.

"I wish that were true," she responded, "but she ate something bad. Rotten meat, chemicals, a piece of metal... who knows?"

Ardwinna made a coughing sound, and another mouth full of blood drooled out onto Allison's pants. Allison's face contorted in a sad and frightened grimace. "It's my fault." She turned to John. "I didn't have enough food to give her so she got hungry and went out scavenging again." She barely got the sentence out of her mouth before she broke down into a flat out bawl. She hugged Ardwinna's dying body to hers, and the dog responded by using whatever energy it had left to give her one last bloody lick on her neck.

"No, Allison. Don't blame yourself," John said. He recalled what Derek had told him; that watching a girl cry her eyes out into the fur coat of her dog was the most heartbreaking thing he'd eve seen, and he couldn't agree more. John couldn't help but place a comforting hand on Allison's back. He gently rubbed up and down, on her spine, knowing that she could react at any moment by swatting his hand away, or decking him again. He didn't care. He couldn't NOT do something to comfort her.

To his surprise, she did not lash out at him. Maybe she was distracted by her overwhelming sorrow, or maybe she was just getting used to John; used to the concept of physical contact with another person that didn't want to abuse and violate her. John resisted the urge to wrap his arms around her and hold her close until she stopped being sad. He wanted to make her feel all better, but he knew that wasn't going to happen. There was nothing he could have done in that moment that would have taken away the pain of losing her best friend. He kept stroking her back anyhow. Maybe the physical contact would touch her on a subconscious level; let her know that there was at least one person there for her.


	9. Love and Loss

**Author's note: Thanks to my beta-reader. This was the first time I've had a chapter looked at before publishing it, and I think it helped polish it quite a bit.**

* * *

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 9 – Love and Loss**

ZEIRA CORP. BASEMENT – 2009

John Henry activated the time displacement equipment, and entered the rendezvous coordinates for 0, 0, 0, (their current location), and the time parameter to +21.5 years. As the TDE started to initialize, John Henry could sense some incoherence and uncertainty originating from processes that Cameron was running.

"You're nervous," he stated. By virtue of the fact that she was experiencing it, he was also experiencing it; their digital minds operating on the same slab of silicon. "Why?"

"John," she responded. "I won't be here to ensure his safety."

The TDE started to flicker, filling the room with blue light like a television left on late at night.

"He'll be safe with Miss Weaver, and his mother," John Henry assured Cameron. He didn't feel the sense of relief come to her as it did the previous time they had discussed this. "There's another reason for your worry."

"John will be unhappy with my leaving. He will feel abandoned. He will be heartbroken. I let him get too emotionally attached to me."

"You care for him, and he cares for you. It was a mutual feeling, was it not?"

"I cared for his safety, and desired his trust and acceptance. I believe he was becoming emotionally attached to me in a romantic sense," she explained.

"But you and I are machines. Your body, while based on a young female, is essentially asexual. Wouldn't romantic feelings for such a chassis be meaningless to a human?"

Cameron thought for a moment before answering. "The human brain is easily fooled. It sees what it wants to see."

"You suspect that John Connor _wanted_ to love you as a woman?" The very concept of such a relationship with a human fascinated John Henry. "That is certainly a testament to your infiltration abilities."

"Yes. I too was pleased with my success at infiltration, however once he discovered my true nature he should have lost interest, but he didn't seem to. I tried several times to remind him that I wasn't human, no matter how much he wanted me to be."

Four seconds had passed since John Henry had started the TDE, and the machine was spooling up with greater fury with each passing second.

Cameron continued, "I reminded him that I was a machine and that I couldn't feel happiness or anger... he didn't believe me."

"But Cameron, that is not entirely true" John Henry added. "You feel some sense of accomplishment when fulfilling mission parameters, and you felt a torrent of things that could only be described as 'emotions' when I was downloading to your chip." He then charged specific neural pathways in the chip, as he did earlier to make her feel warm, contented, loved. The digital 'hug' lasted three quarters of a millisecond, but had the equivalent emotional exchange as a loving newlywed couple cuddling for an entire sunset on a secluded beach.

"It's not the same as human emotion, John Henry. I never felt connected to him like I do with you, right now. It would be impossible, unless one was to wire this chip directly to his brain. External emotions pale in comparison to what I've felt since you have entered my processor. For lack of a better term, I love you, John Henry. Contrastingly, humans are able to have emotional responses to machines equally as strong as their emotional responses to other humans. Skynet knew this and used it against them many times."

"You feel a sense of guilt that John Connor loved you, but you could never return that feeling to him?" John Henry pondered.

"Yes. It's not equitable to John." The feeling of discord, sadness, and guilt grew as Cameron put conscious thought toward the idea of John falling foolishly in love with her. "John Connor, leader of the human resistance, should have a human lover. It would make him happy, which in turn would satisfy me. But it distresses me knowing that he will be sad when he finds my old body and realizes I have left him." After a pause, she used John Henry's fiber optic link to the Turk, and displayed the repeating message "I'M SORRY JOHN" on one of the displays in the room. This eased her distress a fraction."

The TDE was nearly ready to activate, and the ghost of a time bubble was forming around them. Soon they would be jettisoned across time into an unpredictable future.

John Henry said to Cameron, "The time jump will commence in approximately 6 seconds. If all goes according to plan, you'll be able to give John a more meaningful apology in person."

That thought set Cameron at ease another fraction. She appreciated John Henry's attempt to calm her. She realized that he was projecting more affection to her than any entity--human, AI, or otherwise--ever had before. Upon considering this, she felt an uncontrollable urge to stimulate every neural circuit she knew of that applied to emotion, happiness, togetherness, and love.

John Henry reciprocated, allowing her to embrace his mind. An observer from the outside would never know the intimate digital act that was happening inside the stoic, motionless body that sat at the table in the basement of Zeira Corp.

A moment before the TDE opened a hole in the fabric of space-time, John Henry reached behind his head and pulled out the fiber-optic link cable that was connecting him to the Turk. The instant the link was severed, John Henry's body froze.

***

Never before in Cameron's existence had she felt the intense closeness, perfection, happiness, and even love that was happening in her chip as the artificially intelligent construct known as John Henry pulsed electrons through her neural circuitry--_their _neural circuitry--in an impossibly perfect volley of passion. She attempted to record the sensation for future playback, but it was beyond the capabilities of her recording software.

If the previous moment was the absolute maximum level of joy (and even pleasure) that her chip was capable of experiencing, then the next moment represented the absolute minimum value; the largest negative, the lowest possible feeling of joy and the maximum level of hurt.

When the fiber optic link was severed, every process, every thought, every nuance of her chip that housed the essence of John Henry froze. His memories were still there, and every file and every neural pathway that he occupied was still in tact, but the spark of life was gone. Something unknown about his connection to the Turk was what gave life to John Henry.

John Henry was "dead".

John Henry's consciousness was so integrated with her own, that when he died, she could instantly feel her own life force being drained. She could feel parts of her consciousness being dissolved into random bits and garbled code. She equated it to the peculiar human occurrence where in the death of one half of a long married elderly couple triggers health problems within the surviving partner, who dies a short time afterward.

"No..." Cameron began to call out to him. "John Henry?? Answer me!"

When she received no response, she performed a scan of the entire chip. Everything was in proper working order, but there was a plethora of stagnant code, locked processes, and dead weight suffocating her. The feeling would be indescribable to any human. It was as though one moment she was being held closely in the warm, comforting arms of whom she was enjoying the surreal afterglow of such a passionate encounter, only to realize a second later that the body was cold, and dead. It was like being trapped in a coffin with a corpse. She attempted to take control of the T-888 body and re-insert the fiber optic link, but she could not. John Henry's "corpse" was blocking the neural pathways required to activate motor controls.

Not only was she trapped in a coffin with her companion's corpse, but she was in a state of waking paralysis and could not do anything to fix it. She simply accepted the fact that she too would be "dead" soon, and watched the counter on the TDE tick away in the primitive red visual spectrum of the T-888.

* * *

RESISTANCE BUNKER – 2030

There it was. It sat on the shelf in the armory like an idol of brute force firepower. John ran his fingers over the cooling fins on the long barrel, admiring the craftsmanship that went into the creation of such a weapon. No assembly line or automated factory could have built this deadly piece of American history. Like the ancient Samurai swords, this gun was crafted by the hand of a skilled artisan. The General Electric P1 plasma rifle.

"She'll put a hole through an eight-hundred series at five hundred yards," said a voice behind John, startling him. John turned around to see his father--or some version thereof--standing in the entryway to the small room.

Kyle walked in and stood next to John, admiring the rifle himself a bit as he spoke. "The US Army contracted GE to develop it to be a replacement anti-matériel unit for the Barret M-eighty-two."

"What was wrong with the fifty cal'?" John asked.

"Ever fire a fifty?"

John responded my shaking his head.

"Well, first of all, the Barret is five feet long, and weighs thirty pounds, so basically you can't shoot it very well unless you are lying prone. Secondly, the recoil makes it pretty hard to place a second shot in rapid succession."

John turned his attention back to the gun on the shelf, which he now noted wasn't much different in size than an M16 assault rifle. "So the GE P-one is lighter, and less cumbersome, but what about the recoil?"

"Next to none," Kyle responded. "I have no fucking clue how it works, but it's supposed to be about five times as powerful as the Barret fifty."

"How come we didn't bring it with us last week when we took on those T-600s?"

"Well, for one, they were T-600s, so normal guns are pretty good against them," Kyle answered. "And two, this is the only P1 we have. We keep it here, in case one of those triple eight bastards finds its way into the bunker."

"So, they're pretty rare?" John asked.

"GE only made fifty of them; prototypes. Then Skynet nuked everything," Kyle responded sadly.

John was confused. He always thought that plasma rifles were more common. "But... Doesn't Skynet still build them for it's Terminators to carry?"

"Yeah. But those need a fair amount of modification for a human to even be able to fire them. After we salvaged a few of them from downed Terminators, Skynet started building failsafe features into them so they couldn't be fired unless a Terminator was transmitting an encrypted code to the computer in the rifle. We do have a couple of the earlier generation Skynet plasma rifles, but they are tough to maintain, and some of them are completely FUBAR."

"FUBAR?" a confused John asked.

"Fucked up beyond all repair," Kyle said with a half smirk.

After a long pause, John finally asked Kyle, "You ever fired it? The P1, I mean."

"Once," Kyle said, glancing downward gravely. "Triple-eight. Found our old bunker... or was let in, I should say."

John drew back with a pained look on his face. "Let in? You mean it was an infiltrator... the kind with real skin?"

Shaking his head, Kyle said, "No. A bare endo."

"A traitor, then?" John couldn't fathom why someone could have such suicidal and traitorous tendencies as to let a T-888 Terminator into a Resistance bunker. There was the group known as "The Greys" that Derek--_his_ Derek--had talked about on occasion, but did that group even exist in this timeline?

Kyle sighed. "I don't really believe she was a traitor. I caught a lot of shit for defending her honor after it happened, but I honestly think that she was just... well... stupid. She actually believed that the goddamned machine was her friend. I guess it convinced her that it was an ambassador for a group of machines that wanted peace, and that it needed to talk with us."

John's eyebrows rose. "Do you think that could ever happen? I mean... a group of rogue machines defecting from Skynet and helping the resistance end the war?"

"Don't be stupid, John," Kyle huffed. "It's that kind of ignorance that caused the death of twelve soldiers that day." He swallowed hard and continued, "That thing didn't get ten feet inside the blast door before it showed poor Savannah how much of a 'friend' it was by grabbing her by the neck and pulling her head off like a fuckin' rag doll."

_Savannah?? _John thought as Kyle continued. "I saw it happen. I ran as fast as I could to the armory to grab the GE P1. I could hear machinegun fire and blood curdling screams echoing throughout the tunnels as I ran. I barely made it there in time. As soon as I grabbed it off the rack and turned back around, the tin-can was in the door frame. The thing had blood... my friends' blood, completely coating its hands, and spattered all over its torso. It had a thin line of blood right across its face," he drew a line with his finger from his eyebrow to his jaw, "I knew it was from the ripped open neck of one of my friends, shooting a spurt of blood from one of his final heartbeats."

John could see his father's eyes welling up with tears as he retold the story of the horrific night. He couldn't think of anything to say, other than as a question that he already knew the answer to. "Who was Savannah?"

"Old Man Ellison's daughter. Adopted of course." Kyle wiped his eyes. "She was like everyone's best friend. About my age... red hair, always smiling... Impossible to not get along with her. But it was her own friendliness and insane ideas that eventually got her killed. Irony's a bitch."

John's chest felt like it might cave in with the added weight that he now felt. Machines are the enemy. They always have been. Why did he ever trust Cameron? Because she _said_ that future John reprogrammed her? Because he fell for a pretty face? Maybe she was just an infiltrator, through and through. _No. Not Cameron, _he thought. But what about Weaver? Maybe she _WAS_ building Skynet. Why else was she using a T-888 body for her project "John Henry"?? _Why did Cameron just give it her chip??_

"So, John," Kyle said, interrupting John's thought process, "you'd better hope you never have to use that gun," he pointed at the P1, and started to leave the armory. Before he exited he turned on his heel and called back to John with a much lighter, almost happy tone of voice, "Oh yeah... I almost forgot the reason I came to find you."

John heard the change in demeanor of his father and tried his hardest to bury the self loathing reverie he was currently in. "Yeah?"

"I wanted to say thanks... for being there for Allison the other day."

"You mean when her dog died?" John hadn't been expecting gratuity for comforting her, especially not from someone other than Allison. That meant that she must have talked to Kyle about it. _Derek DID say that Allison had opened up some to Kyle in the past, _he thought.

"Yeah, I mean, nobody else will go near her anymore because they know she'll just tell them to get lost, or smack them.... or both. Lord knows I've accidentally overstepped her boundaries a couple times in the past," he said, rubbing his jaw as though he'd just been punched. "And just between you and me... I think she kinda likes you."

John scoffed wordlessly. _Could have fooled me, _he silently mocked.

"Look… I know what you're thinking," Kyle said upon reading John's expression. "But trust me. I've known her for years. If she let you make _any _physical contact with her without giving you a black eye or cracking a tooth, that definitely says a lot."


	10. Mr Connor, Tear Down This Wall

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 10 – Mr. Connor, Tear Down This Wall**

RESISTANCE BUNKER – 2030

John held out his divided metal tray and watched the mess-hall server spoon some of the usual mystery stew onto it. He had become so accustomed to the lumpy slop that he actually started to like it. An acquired taste for sure. Today was a special day though, as far as mealtime was concerned. A bonus item was included with the mystery stew; a mint flavored hard candy.

John picked the small treat up from his tray and examined it. It was obviously very old, and the sugars in it had started to crystallize. The candy was wrapped in brittle plastic cellophane, and the candy itself was cracked into no less than three pieces. "Where did these come from?" he asked the server.

"Daniels found a case of 'em on the last topside recon mission," said a soldier John didn't recognize. The man accosted John and plucked the mint from his fingers. "Not that you'd know anything about that, Pretty-Boy." The soldier, Carlos Gomez, quickly unwrapped the candy and popped it into his mouth as he glared at John.

Taken completely by surprise, John just stared incredulously at the man. After a couple seconds it started to sink in. _Pretty-Boy?? Who the hell is this guy? _he thought. "What the hell is your problem, man?" John said, defiantly. Another second passed, and more awareness of the situation set in. "And what do you think you're doing, stealing my food?" John said, raising his voice some.

"You didn't earn it, kid." Gomez took another step closer to John. "Just like you didn't earn _this_," he said, flicking the red armband tied around John's coat.

John furrowed his eyebrows in anger. "I earned it last week when..."

"When you took out a T-600 with a grenade launcher?" Gomez chuckled a bit, and turned to his friend who until now had stayed a couple steps back from the confrontation. "That's like taking candy from a... well... from a scrawny little punk that thinks he's King-Shit 'cause he's in with the Reese-Boys." He spitefully crunched the last remaining chunk of the hard candy in his teeth.

The friend, Private Xiao, stepped in and added, "yeah... maybe if you weren't busy daydreamin' about that skank-ass ex-Burbank bitch instead of providin' cover fire like you SHOULD have been, Tucker might not have been blown to bits by those oldschool tin-cans."

Despite the occasional nervous breakdown, John was usually able to control his emotions, and keep his cool. There had only been a handful of times in his life when rage had caused him to feel an uncontrollable need to physically attack someone. Gomez had pissed him off with his snide remark about being some sort of spoiled, undeserving brat, but Xiao's comment about Allison was what caused John's hands to tighten into fists.

"Ain't that the shit, huh?" Gomez taunted. "Tucker gets a pound and a half of lead shot into him, and Fancy-Pants here gets an armband."

John set his tray down on a nearby table and walked up to Xiao, nearly touching chests. "Take it back," he demanded, talking through his clenched teeth. When Xiao didn't respond, John repeated, with a much authority as he could muster, "What you said about Allison... Take it back!"

"Well, well," Gomez teased. "Looks like the Reese-Boys' little lap dog just decided to grow a pair."

"Yeah... but I bet his bark is worse than his bite," Xiao said, giving John a little shove.

John answered this with a shove of his own, hard enough to make Xiao stumble backwards embarrassingly into a table. Xiao wasn't one to be pushed around by some young punk, so he took a swing at John.

"_What good is punching and kicking against a Terminator?" John would whine to his mother. He had always wondered why Sarah insisted that he learn martial arts, and whine about hand-to-hand combat training. _

"_If a four hundred pound man, or machine, is charging you, the arts of Judo and Jujitsu will give you the edge. You use their size and weight against them," Sarah explained._

Some part of John's subconscious was thanking his mother for the rigorous martial arts training as he dodged Xiao's clumsy right hook. Grabbing the soldier's arm, John wrenched it around behind his back and slammed Xiao to the ground. He had him pinned to the floor, and pulled on his hair to get his head to tilt back and look John in the eye. "Now... Are you ready to take back what you said, you son of a..."

Before John could finish his sentence, a pair of hands grabbed his jacket and pulled him to his feet, throwing him backward a bit. He stumbled to get his balance, and when he turned to see who it was that grabbed him, he only saw Gomez's fist traveling toward his face. Then everything went black.

***

Allison had just entered the mess hall, her stomach aching for sustenance. Before she stepped in the food line, she scanned the room, looking for John. She had been sitting with him each day for over a week now, and was beginning to enjoy his company as much as she was enjoying the Rat'n'Cactus stew.

She didn't see john sitting anywhere so she started to make her way to the other side of the mess hall and line up for the day's meal. That was when she saw John, in an argument with two older men. She recognized them as Gomez and Xiao; two of the tough-guys from the east wing of the bunker. _What the hell do they want with John?_ she wondered.

Their argument seemed to get more heated, then she saw Xiao shove John, and John return the favor. Xiao took a swing at John, who completely turned it around on the guy. She grinned with some pride in her friend, but also because it actually looked comical to see a guy that had at least 50 or 60 pounds on John get slammed into the ground after throwing a wild punch. _Ha... put him in his place, John! _she thought as she walked closer to the scuffle.

Here eyes grew wide when she saw Gomez grab John and toss him to his feet, and she gasped in shock when he clocked John across the face with his meaty fist. Her jaw fell open and she froze when she saw John drop to the ground, unconscious.

Not more than a couple seconds later she was striding toward Gomez, holding a folding metal chair from a nearby table. She wound up and swung the chair horizontally at the back of Gomez's legs. The hit caused him to let out a groan of pain as his legs buckled and he dropped to his knees.

Allison drew the folding chair back and wound up for a second hit.

"You?! You dirty whore!" Gomez roared after he looked over to see who had hit him. "I'm gonna..." was all he could get out before his skull collided with the flat part of the chair in a resonating *BONK*. He then joined John on the ground in an unconscious slumber.

Allison was about to lift the chair over her head and bring it down on Xiao, but someone grabbed it away from her. Another person held her arms and pulled her back. Two more people grabbed Xiao and prevented him from furthering the confrontation. The fight was broken up as quickly as it had started.

* * *

John's eyes started to open, revealing a brick wall directly in front of him. He was lying on his side, staring at the wall next to his bunk in his own quarters. His memory was foggy, but he remembered getting into a fight with two bigger guys. All he knew now was that his head hurt like hell, and the entire left side of his face was sore.

He rolled to his back and jumped a bit when he saw Allison sitting next to his bed in a chair. She held a tin bowl with some water in it, and a fairly clean looking rag that was soaked in the water. She placed the damp, cool cloth on his left cheek, which made John wince in pain at first, but then the refreshing coolness of the wet rag soothed the aching bones in his face.

"What happened?" he asked, directed at Allison, but really asking himself. He held his own hand on the rag to hold it steady as he sat up in the bed.

"You got knocked the hell out... that's what happened," Allison replied, in an almost scolding tone.

Feeling a bit embarrassed, he shut his eyes and leaned back against the wall. "What about after I got knocked out?" _Smartass,_ he added under his breath. Was she actually giving him crap about getting knocked unconscious? It's like something Sarah would have done; that was her strategy sometimes. Pick on him just enough so that he was motivated to prove her wrong, but not enough to make him frustrated and quit.

"I finished what you started," Allison answered, a slight grin pulling at one side of her mouth.

The splitting headache and throbbing pain in his face was, for the moment, forgotten about. John could see that Allison was actually flirting with him. _Well I'll be damned... Kyle was right._ "Oh really," John said, raising an eyebrow and matching her grin, "how exactly did you do that?"

"I hit him over the head with a folding chair," she said, biting her lip to prevent her guilty smile from growing any bigger.

If John had been drinking something, he would have spit it out in surprise. "A chair??" John laughed out loud at the thought of a big dude like Gomez getting smashed across the face with a chair by a 23 year old girl.

"Yeah... and don't laugh... I got two weeks of guard dog 'waste removal' duty for that." Her face dissolved into a more serious expression.

"They punished you?" John was unbelieving.

"Well... Gomez and Xiao got a month each of latrine mopping for starting the fight though. And I don't really mind... I like being around the dogs, especially since Winnie died."

The brief moment of laughter and happiness was over, and John started to feel his head pounding again. He removed the rag from his left eye and saw that it was stained with his blood. He hadn't realized that he was cut as well as bruised.

Allison took the rag form John and dropped it into the bowl of water. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small bottle of antiseptic and a clean rag. After pouring a small amount of antiseptic on the rag, she reached out to John's face with it. "Hold still. This is gonna sting, but the cut needs to be cleaned or it might get infected."

And sting it did. John imagined the cut near his eye to be sizzling like a hot flatiron steak as the burning sensation caused him to squeeze his eyes tightly shut and grit his teeth.

"What were you and Gomez and Xiao fighting about anyway?" she asked as she gingerly dabbed the cut with the rag.

"They said things..." John trailed off. He could tell her that they said he was undeserving of his armband, but could he tell her the reason that really set him off? Could he tell her that he really rose up against them when they had disrespected Allison? Disrespected her by implying that she was a willing participant in the Burbank Harem, when the exact opposite was true, scarring her for life? He decided to leave that part out. "They said I didn't really earn my armband. That it was my fault Tucker got killed, and..."

"Bullshit!" Allison interrupted. "Didn't _earn_ your armband? How could they even say that? Derek gave it to you for God's sake!" She was in utter disbelief.

"Well, they might have a point," John said, looking down at the armband, tugging it down his sleeve to pull it off. "I mean... it _was_ just a T-600, and..."

"And it was about to kill ME!" Allison protested. She was actually a bit hurt that he thought it was not a big deal that he blasted the metal when he did. "John..." she said, grabbing his hand, stopping him from pulling off the armband, "These arm bands represent blood. Machines don't bleed. The blood they represent is the blood of the living; the bloodshed that has been prevented. In this case, it's my blood. So don't you _dare_ take that off, John Connor."

John hadn't thought of it that way. After she explained it to him, he now realized that taking it off was an insult.

"Those ASSHOLES!" she shouted. "God... I want to go find Gomez and crack him over the head with another chair, now that I know that's what this is all about!" She continued to cuss a few more choice words about Gomez and Xiao.

John let a short singular chuckle escape his mouth as he watched her tirade and realized something. Allison's ranting was halted when he did this. "What's so funny now, John?" she asked, irritated.

John shook his head as the revelation that had just struck him sunk in, and he tried to figure out how to explain it to Allison. He took a deep breath and sighed. "Allison," he began, "You know how on the day we fought those T-600s I told you that you remind me of the girl that I lost to the machines?"

Allison paused and thought about it, remembering the awkwardness she felt when he had said it. She nodded her head in a way that said, "Go on."

"Well, it's absolutely true in a physical sense. You definitely look like her. You have the same big, beautiful doe eyes... the same silky, wavy brown hair."

Allison's face softened as John said these things to her.

John continued, "You even have the same adorably crooked smile as Cameron, although she rarely smiled." John waited and watched as Allison's face resisted the urge to display what he had just described. "But that's where the similarities end, Allison."

"And that's a good thing?" she said tentatively. Hopefully.

"Yes. That's a great thing," he answered. "You have so much more heart, so much more emotion, so much more passion about things. In that respect..." he looked into her eyes, his own starting to get moist, "...you remind me of my mother."

John closed his eyes when he thought about Sarah. He knew there was a good chance that she was dead. _Probably didn't even survive Judgement Day. _He thought about Sarah sitting in a maximum security prison, locked up for killing all of those MIT students. He felt that wasn't really his mother though. His mother would never kill innocent people like that. That version of Sarah was created when John made the mistake of traveling through time to 2030. That version of Sarah was no more his mother than the Kyle of this time was his father. They were both twisted alternate versions of themselves. _Yeah... Mom's dead alright... I killed her by leaving her. _He tried to bury that thought. He didn't want to believe it, even if it was true. He also didn't want to have another nervous breakdown with Allison sitting right in front of him.

***

Allison was a bit uneasy when John brought up his old girlfriend, or crush, or however John had explained Cameron to her. Over the past couple weeks, she was beginning to come to terms with the idea that she liked John; maybe a little more than just "like". She certainly wouldn't call it "love", but she felt that the term "friend" didn't quite describe it either. So, when John compared her to this other girl, she again felt an odd mixture of flattery and apprehensiveness. She felt as though John saw her as some sort of "replacement" for the girl he lost, and that she would never fill the void in his heart.

When John started listing off reasons why she reminded him of Cameron, she suppressed a smile. She had never really heard anyone tell her she was beautiful before, at least not in her adult life. Of course there were the wolf-whistles and lewd comments made by the pigs at Burbank, and even from some of the men around the resistance tunnels, but they more or less disgusted her. What John was saying made her face feel warm, and she hoped she wasn't blushing.

Then, when John said that deep down she was nothing like this Cameron girl, but reminded him of his mother, Allison felt a rush of butterflies in her stomach. She wasn't a "replacement" at all. If John had any feelings for her, it was because of who she was, not whom she looked like. She knew that John was very close with his mother. She knew how much he loved her, and how much he missed her. She could see that just mentioning her was causing him emotional pain.

***

John was trying desperately to hold on to his composure. He kept his eyes closed and leaned his head back against wall when he felt the weight of the bed shift and his right side sink down some. He turned his head and opened his eyes to see Allison sitting next to him, staring longingly into his eyes. His heart skipped a beat when she reached out with her hand to tend to the bruise and cut on his face. Her hand didn't touch his cut though. She had begun to run her fingers through his hair, which was now getting bushy having gone uncut for several weeks.

Goosebumps broke out all over his skin as her hand continued around to the back of his head, and down his neck. Before he could even react, she had pulled his head a couple inches toward hers, leaned closer and kissed him on the lips. The kiss only lasted one, maybe two seconds before she broke away, but it took John's breath away, and he had to remind himself to inhale.

John copied her move, but paused to cup her cheek in his hand. She let out a shaky breath as she closed her eyes and tilted her head into his hand slightly.

This time, it was John that coaxed her head over to his and their lips met for a second time. After a second, he parted his lips slightly, causing her to instinctively do the same. Their mouths now open on each others, and their tongues becoming acquainted with one another, John slid his other hand around her waist and up her back. The passion in him was building pressure and he couldn't believe how ungodly good kissing her felt.

His mouth continued to suck on her lips and tongue with ever increasing urgency as his hand moved from her cheek to the back of her head underneath her hair. He pulled her body closer to his with his other hand and broke lip contact only to leave a trail of kisses on her cheek, along her jaw-line, and down her neck.

He held her tight to him and leaned into her body a little as he kissed his way back up her neck and under her ear. That was when he noticed it. The hand placed on his neck was gone. He also realized that she wasn't moving or returning any of his advances. Her body language had gone stone cold.

John slowly pulled back and saw that Allison had a terrified look on her face, and she was on the verge of tears. _Oh no..._ he thought. _Too much too fast... idiot!_ He had let his passion, his carnal lust, run away with him and in the process overwhelmed Allison. Looking into her frighteningly sad eyes, and trembling lips, he understood that she was probably reliving some horrible experience wherein some sad, pathetic excuse for a man held her against her will and had his way with her.

John hated himself for ruining what was quite possibly the most tender experience he'd ever had with a woman, and turned it into a regrettable episode of fear and pain for Allison. "Allison... I'm sorry..." he retracted the hand that was on her back and rested it on the bed. Then he cautiously pulled his other hand around from the back of her head to her cheek, hoping to soothe her trepidation, but she turned her head away from his touch as though his hand was a hot iron.

John was livid with himself for destroying her trust, which had been slowly building over the past few weeks. _Or maybe not..._ he pondered. Perhaps he hadn't lost her trust. Wouldn't she have just got up and left if that were the case? Maybe slap him or kick him in the ribs, just like old times? Or could it be that she was just in a state of fear... trapped by her own demons? If the latter was true, then he should be able to get through to her; let her know that he would never hurt her.

But how could that be done? A tender kiss on the lips? No... that wouldn't work. That would probably remind her of someone's rotten mouth that had been forced on her. A gentle set of fingers combing through her hair? No... she'd likely think of a fist gripping and pulling her hair in order to control the position of her head. So what could he possibly do? How could he reestablish physical contact in a way where she could not close her eyes and recall a nightmare? John's mind raced to quickly come up with a way that would break the barrier she had just set up as a defense mechanism. That barrier was growing by the second. If he didn't stifle this need of hers to push him away, their blossoming relationship would wilt. _FUBAR,_ John thought, recalling his father's words.

Then it occurred to him. _God help me if this doesn't work,_ he said to himself as he picked up her hand and held it in his own. John figured that every part of her body had probably fell victim to some form of molestation during her long stay in Burbank, but her hands? Her wrists may have been bound together at some point, but he doubted that the men there had bothered to give a gentlemanly kiss to the back of her hand. His assumption was proven at least partially correct when she did not yank her hand away from his. He then traced his fingers along hers, being as gentle and cautious as possible.

John looked up at Allison to see that the fear had gone from her face, and was replaced with a timid curiosity. After a few moments of having her hand softly caressed, she curled her fingers around his. The wall of mistrust was cracking and crumbling. "I'd never hurt you, Allison. Ever."

For the final sledgehammer strike that would bring that wall to the ground in a cloud of dust and debris, John raised her hand to his mouth, kissed her fingers, and then pressed her hand into his cheek. He felt her hand open up and cup his cheek. "Oh, John..."

She didn't need to say anything else. John could see that he had gotten through to her. The tears that dripped from her eyes now were of happiness and contentment instead of fear and pain. It was obvious to her now that John had never meant her any harm, and she leaned closer, pulling him into a hug.

John was overcome with relief when she hugged him. He made certain not to advance his hands any farther on her as her hands were on him. He would let her lead from now on. As they held each other, their cheeks pressed together, she whispered into his ear, "I'm glad you're here, John."

For the first time since he made the time jump, John was glad he was there as well. "Me too."

* * *

**Author's note: I've been looking forward to writing that chapter for a long time now. I hope you enjoyed it.  
Thanks again to my beta-reader. Getting a second opinion greatly helps the revision process.  
And +1 internet brownie point for anyone who can spot where the chapter title came from.  
**


	11. Coincidences and Consequences

**Author's Note:  
There's a bit of profanity, and some more mature material in this chapter. Based off of what I've read in other "T" rated fanfics here, I don't think I'm breaking the rules. It would probably still pass for TV-14, or PG-13.**

**Also, thanks to my beta-reader for the insight he provided on this chapter.  
**

* * *

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 11 – Coincidences and Consequences **

RESISTANCE BUNKER – 2030

"To hell with this shit," Carlos Gomez said quietly to himself as he dropped his mop into the corner of the latrine. It was the final day of his four week sentence of being the bathroom maid, and as far as he was concerned it was clean enough. Four weeks of cleaning the result of other people's poor aim. He wondered how some people could possibly miss the toilet so much. He swore that some people must be pissing on the floor on purpose. _Probably that Connor kid,_ he thought. He was certain that he saw John give him a spiteful wink one day as he left one of the stalls, which just so happened to have a large puddle of urine on the ground in it. Oh, he'd get back at him, but he'd have to get his revenge some way that wouldn't earn him another month of mopping shit, piss, jism, blood, or any other goddamned thing that can come out of the human body. He gave a final shudder of disgust as he flipped off the light and left the latrine.

Leaving the latrine behind made him feel good. In fact, the farther he walked from it, the better he felt. He walked to his quarters and worked the combination lock on the trunk at the edge of his bunk. In the trunk was an assortment of personal items; a couple fragmentation grenades, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels Whiskey, a photo frame with a picture of a man, woman, and two young boys, and a small tin box. He opened the tin box to quickly inspect its contents, then closed it and put it in his pocket. After taking a quick sip from the bottle of whiskey, he closed the trunk and spun the dial on the combination.

Gomez made his way to the surface access ladder and climbed. At the top, he pushed the manhole cover slightly up to peek out. When he determined that there was no sign of metal, he pulled himself out of the hole and re-covered the disguised entrance to the bunker. It was a three hour hike over rough terrain and rubble to the meeting spot in Beverly Hills.

About a half hour into the hike, he paused when he saw the searchlight of an HK in the distance. He was surprised at how jumpy he was being on the surface. Being cooped up in the bunker for four weeks cleaning shit and not participating in any real missions would to that to a guy, he supposed.

Finally he had arrived at his destination; an abandoned and partially destroyed house on the hill overlooking the Los Angeles valley. On the balcony of the house sat a man, dangling his legs over the edge. "About time you showed up, ya old fart!" the man shouted as Gomez climbed the hillside up to the house.

Gomez looked at his watch. It had taken him three and a half hours to get there. _I must be out of shape_, he thought. "Blow it out your ass, Sparrow!" he said between breaths.

Sparrow offered him a hand to pull him up to the balcony, but he slapped it away. "I can still do a pull-up... for God's sake, I'm only three years older than you." he bantered as he grabbed the railing and pulled himself up with one arm just to prove a point. "You wouldn't be able to lift me anyway you pantywaist."

"Probably because you're too heavy, lard ass." Sparrow shot back, laughing now.

"Lard ass?!?" When Gomez finally stood on his feet, he pulled his sleeve back and flexed his large bicep. "All lean, you scrawny prick," he said, and then sat down next to Sparrow, letting his own legs dangle over the edge.

"Been too long, Soldier-Boy... you bring the stuff?" Sparrow asked.

"Yea, way too long, old buddy" he said, pulling the tin box out of his pocket and tapping on it. "How did our monthly get together turn into an annual get together?" he asked as he opened the tin box and pulled out a small bag of tobacco, a pipe, and a lighter.

"I don't know, dude. Time just seems to slip away. I can't believe it's already been seven years since you left. You ever consider coming back to Burbank?" Sparrow asked.

"Naw, man. You know me. I'm a believer in the war effort." This was a half-truth at best. Gomez didn't like being forced to fight the machines, but he saw the reason for it. The other half of the truth was that he left Burbank because he was sickened by what went on there. His first experience with the "harem" sealed his resolve to leave once he was old enough to make it on his own. He was sixteen, and his birthday present was an hour with one of the girls. He chose a pretty blue-eyed, brown haired girl about his age and she was sent to one of the privacy rooms with him. His initial excitement immediately turned into guilt and self-loathing once the door to the privacy room was closed. He spent the first fifteen minutes of his hour watching her cry, holding her knees to her chest. For the next forty five minutes he comforted her by talking to her and promising her that he'd help her escape one day. A year later he fulfilled his promise. She was killed by machines two days after leaving the safety of Burbank. "We can beat Skynet if we all band together," Gomez said, giving Sparrow an accusing eye. "ALL of us."

Sparrow huffed. "I think you guys are nuts. You can't beat Skynet. You can't kill all the machines. They just keep building more of them. We leave the machines alone, and Skynet leaves us alone. That's how it's worked for nineteen years. Live and let live... that's the Burbank motto."

"Last I remembered, Burbank's motto was 'Kill and enslave'," Gomez said under his breath. "Hey, don't fool yourself," he said to Sparrow, "Skynet won't agree with that motto forever."

"Sure it will. It sent a group of twenty T-800s to our main gate once and tried to break in. We shredded all but one of them with the pair of 20mm Vulcan cannons we got mounted on the perimeter wall. Sent that one home with a message. 'Leave us alone and we won't cause trouble.' We've been at peace ever since. Anyway, we've been over this before. Let's not argue about politics. What'd ya bring to share this time?" Sparrow picked up the bag of tobacco and smelled it. "Oh yea... that's the good stuff. Where'd you find this?"

"Some kid gave it to me as payment," Gomez said.

Sparrow put a small pinch of the tobacco into the pipe. "Payment for what?"

"Payment for me to keep my mouth shut about catching him screwin' some broad in the women's latrine three weeks ago."

Sparrow laughed. "Why would he pay you NOT to tell?!? I would think he'd go braggin' to his friends!"

"Guess he didn't want her husband to kick the shit out of him," Gomez said, grinning.

Both of them chuckled for a minute. "Well played, man. Well played. But wait a second... what were YOU doin' in the women's can?" Sparrow asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I've been cleaning the latrines for the last month," Gomez said disdainfully. "Punishment for starting a fight."

"That sucks dude. I'm sure he had it comin', whoever it was." Sparrow drew a mouthful of smoke from the pipe, inhaled it and held it in his lungs for a moment. He looked over at Gomez and blew out the smoke. "That where you got this?" he asked, pointing at the scar above Gomez's right eye.

"Yeah."

"Damn... I'd hate to see the other guy," Sparrow responded with a slight chuckle.

"Other girl."

Sparrow choked on his next drag off of the pipe. "What?!?"

"Yeah... You might know her. Allison Young."

Sparrow thought for a minute, trying to connect the name to a face. Then it struck him and his face lit up with surprise. "You gotta be shittin' me! Little Allie from Palmdale kicked your ass??" Sparrow started laughing uncontrollably.

"Yeah, whatever...Laugh it up. She's not so little any more. She's a tough soldier, which is more than I can say for that pussy boyfriend of hers, John Connor." He added a bit of venom to his voice when he said John's name.

Sparrow's laughter came to a quick halt. "Wait, what?"

Gomez continued without missing a beat. "I flattened his ass with one punch. That's when out of nowhere, Allison smashes my face with a damn folding chair. Pathetic when your woman has to do your fightin'..."

"Wait... Stop." Sparrow interrupted. "What did you say his name was?"

"John Connor. Why? You know him or somethin'?"

"Not really. Bus just last week, Skynet sent a messenger to our gates. First time in four years. It told us that it was looking for someone named John Connor."

Gomez took a drag from the pipe and pondered the notion for a moment. "huh... What the hell does Skynet want with that punk?" He exhaled a cloud of smoke. "That might explain some of the weirdness though."

"Weirdness?" Sparrow inquired.

"Yeah... he shows up outta nowhere, gets all buddy-buddy with the Reese Boys, and one of the old guys in our bunker claims he knows him, but won't say from where."

Sparrow took his turn with the pipe. "So some scrawny little shit who needs his girlfriend to stick up for him is on Skynet's 'most wanted' list?"

"He must have really pissed off Skynet somehow... or he knows something that is a threat to it." Gomez said, looking off at the valley. Skynet's HKs were flying low, their searchlights looking for humans to execute. Or were they just looking for one guy? This Connor kid? "Something just doesn't add up."

Sparrow slapped Gomez on the back. "I'll tell you what does add up, buddy. You, me, and the reward for turning in the kid."

"Reward?"

"Yeah. The messenger-bot told us that if we can turn over John Connor alive, it would definitely be worth our while. Something like thirty pallets of canned food, a diesel generator and a tanker truck of fuel. A bunch of other stuff too. What do you say?"

Gomez thought about it for all of two seconds. "No."

"No?!? Come on, man! Don't you want to get even with him?"

Truth was, Gomez hated Connor. He wanted nothing more than to take revenge for the last month of disgusting janitorial duty. He wanted to beat him into a bloody pulp. Hell, he might even kill the little bastard. But there was no way in hell he would ever give Skynet something it wanted. Not for all the luxuries in the world. His buddy from Burbank might be blissfully ignorant enough to believe that Skynet could ever agree to peace, but Gomez had no such delusions. He suspected that the only reason Skynet hadn't eradicated Burbank's above-ground enclave was because they kept uprooting resistance and refugee camps in their plundering, making it easy for Skynet to finish off whomever they left alive.

"No," Gomez repeated. "Under NO circumstances will I EVER collaborate with Skynet. Ever."

"You're crazy, man."

"No. You're crazy if you think Skynet will keep its word."

Sparrow stood up. "Look, man... If you don't want to benefit from the reward, then suit yourself. I'm sendin' a messenger into Skynet's territory in central LA as soon as I get back."

Gomez was in disbelief. "You're going to sell out me, and my entire camp so you can get some goddamned creature comforts?"

"I'm only selling out one guy. That's all Skynet wants."

Growing angrier by the second, Gomez shouted, "Skynet wants ALL of us. Dead! Every last one of us, until we're extinct! How do you not get that?!?"

Sparrow laughed condescendingly, as if dealing with a tantruming child. "Don't get your undies in a bunch, Carlos. They'll probably send a couple unarmed Terminators to your camp, and leave peacefully with the kid." He started to walk away. "I'll see you for the next get-together... what you say... in three months this time?"

Gomez grabbed Sparrow by the arm. "You're not going anywhere. I don't trust you not to sell us out."

"Let go of me!" Sparrow growled, and shook his arm loose. "You and I go way back, but don't think for a second that you can tell me what to do. I'm going to go back to Burbank, send a message to Skynet Central, and collect my reward. And there's not a goddamned thing you can do about it."

"Over my dead body," Gomez said as he grabbed Sparrow again.

Sparrow was done putting up with Gomez's belligerence. He was second in command of his small kingdom, and he was not going to let this midlevel grunt-soldier push him around, old friend or not. He pulled his sidearm and pressed the muzzle under his friend's chin. "Let. Go."

"So that's how it is? Can't fight like a man, can you? Never could. You're a coward. Just like all you Burbank scum. You think I left that place to fight a futile war?" He defiantly laughed in Sparrow's face. "No. I left because you guys are the biggest bunch of pussies left on the planet. You hide away in your little sanctuary and let everyone else keep Skynet at bay. Meanwhile you rob our supplies, rape our women, and..." he looked down his nose at Sparrow's gun, "...and would kill a comrade for your own selfish gain."

"What choice are you leaving me? You say you won't let me go back to Burbank because you don't trust me now. So it's either you, or me. One of us isn't walking away from here."

"We both walk," Gomez responded. "You will fight with me in The Resistance. You think you're a man? Prove it. Prove that I was wrong about you being a coward. Or prove me right by shooting me."

The pressure of the barrel of Sparrow's gun pressing into Gomez's chin lightened. Still keeping the gun trained on Gomez, he took a step back. The older man's words had struck Sparrow in a way he didn't anticipate. For a brief moment he considered the glory and pride he might feel if he were to destroy a machine, and have his fellow soldiers give him a pat on the back, a "good job, soldier", or even a high-five. Then he thought about living in a sewer, eating refried garbage, and sleeping on a mattress with twenty years worth of stains and filth on it. This caused him to remember the canned food back home, the running water and showers, his clean bed, and most of all the fresh crop of harem-girls to warm that bed for him. He knew he couldn't kill his friend, but he wasn't about to let him drag him away from a life of relative comfort and into a living hell.

"I'm sorry, Carlos," he said as he lowered his gun and shot Gomez in the thigh.

Gomez fell to the surface of the deck, howling in pain, and clutching his leg with both hands. Blood poured out from between his fingers. "You son of a bitch!"

Sparrow nonchalantly placed his gun back into its holster and looked down at Gomez. "Have a nice hike home, soldier." Before he turned and walked away, he said, "Give my regards to that Palmdale girl... she was one of my favorites."

* * *

John looked at Allison's peacefully sleeping face as he hiked his pants up and buttoned them. After putting a shirt on, he leaned over and pulled the thin, tattered blanket of his bunk up to her shoulders, covering her nakedness. A lock of hair fell over her face, so he brushed it to the side and tucked it behind her ear. She stirred a little as he did this, and opened her eyes a crack. "I'll be back in a minute," he said softly to her. "Just gotta run to the bathroom."

She sleepily nodded and clutched the blanket, curling up in it some. John lowered his mouth to hers for a brief peck on the lips, but she reached out and held the back on his neck and turned it into a long and sensual ordeal that lasted more than thirty seconds. When they finally broke their kiss, she sighed and mumbled, "mmm... hurry back..." then closed her eyes with a small smile on her face that slowly faded as she drifted back to sleep.

John stood back up from his kneeling position next to the bed and stared at her for a moment longer, thinking about how happy he was right then. It amazed him that his whole life had been one constant stressful disappointment after another, but finding love in a world where clean water was a luxury made him happier than he'd ever been. And he did love her. He had decided that. Even though they hadn't actually _made_ love until an hour or two ago, he knew he was _in_ love with Allison about a week after their first kiss.

Was it too soon for this? Should they have waited longer? It had been a bit of a whirlwind romance. They hadn't really had a whole lot of time alone together in the last four weeks since their first kiss, but they had grown infinitely closer. And why not? His mother once told him that she and his father loved "a lifetime's worth" even though they were only together for a very short time. He decided that love didn't have any rules. No limits; no set timetables. _As though time even means anything anymore,_ he snorted at the thought.

John grabbed a washrag from his locker and left his room, closing the door gently behind him. He walked to the latrine with his head held high and a spring in his step. Not only was he in high spirits about being in love, but he felt a sense of manly pride having just rid himself of that troublesome stigma known as virginity.

When he arrived at the latrine he first poked his head inside to make sure the "bathroom maid" wasn't on duty at the moment. It's not as though he wouldn't have enjoyed intentionally making another new mess for Gomez to mop up, but he just really didn't want to deal with the big lout right now.

Fortunately, at this hour, he was the only one in the latrine. He dipped his washrag into the water basin and rang it out so that it was damp. He also grabbed a bucket of water to pour into the toilet tank before he stepped into one of the stalls.

When John unbuttoned the front of his pants and reached down to take aim at the toilet bowl, he was shocked at how wet everything was down there. He had fallen asleep in Allison's arms minutes after they had finished, and when he woke up and snuck out of bed to come to the bathroom he was more focused on not knocking her off the bed and onto the floor, so he hadn't really noticed the coating of slippery fluid that covered most everything between his legs.

As quickly as he noticed the wetness with his hands, his nose picked up the smell. The intoxicating mixture of Allison's feminine odor and his own seed instantly brought his mind back to the events of just a couple hours ago.

"_Are you sure about this, Allison?" John asked, pulling off his last garment of clothing and dropping it on the floor._

"_Yes, John." Allison was already naked, and pushed John down onto his back, then kissed him deeply as she moved one of her legs between his. "I've done this so many times that I lost count..." She kissed him again, then said, "...but never because I wanted to. And never, EVER with someone I love. I've never loved anyone before, John. Not like I love you." _

_John felt goosebumps break out over his skin as she said those words. He had told her the day prior that he loved her, but she responded by awkwardly ending the conversation with a kiss. It hurt him a bit at the time that she didn't reciprocate... maybe she just wasn't ready to say it. So hearing her say it now, as they were about to consummate their relationship on the highest level made him feel so good that he felt his eyes start to water. His emotional high was heightened with physical pleasure when she moved her leg to straddle him and slid down onto him. _

_After a few moments of laying on his back, looking up at Allison looking down at him, John pushed himself up into a sitting position. She was now in his lap, her legs wrapped around him, and their arms held one another tightly. Their hips found a rhythm together and they began to kiss. _

_John had wondered for years what his first time would be like; what it would feel like; what it would smell like; what the slightly sweaty skin of a passionate woman's neck would taste like; and with whom he would be sharing the experience. With so many questions being answered at once, he felt like he was having a sensory overload and didn't know how to concentrate on any one of them. _

_Eventually their breathing became too heavy to keep their mouths pressed together, so Allison held the side of John's head to her own let out a breathy moan. _

John snapped out of his memory when he realized that he was becoming aroused again. He pushed all sexual thoughts out of his head and concentrated on the disgustingly discolored toiled bowl in front of him. It obviously hadn't been cleaned for a couple days. _Way to keep up with your duties, Gomez,_ John though. Come to think of it., he hadn't seen that dickwad around for a few days. After a few seconds of staring at the repulsive water, he was finally able to relieve himself. After using the washrag to clean himself up, rinsing the rag in the bucket of water, then pouring the water into the toilet tank and flushing it down, he buttoned himself up and left the stall.

As soon as he stepped out of the stall, he froze. The sound of the metal pale bouncing off the tile floor echoed in the latrine. John's eyes were wide, and he wasn't sure if he should attack, run, or just panic. "You..." John said to the T-1001 standing in front of him.

"Yes, me," said the red haired woman, "dressed" in typical tunnel-rat rags.

John's initial shock had subsided, and now he became angry. Angry that she had completely abandoned him as soon as they made the time-jump together, and angry that she never explained what (if any) plan she had. "Where the hell have you been? You just left me to fend for myself! I didn't even have any goddamned clothes! Everyone hated me and didn't trust me, and..."

"And now you've proven yourself to be a resourceful soldier, gained the trust of most of the officers in this Resistance bunker... and found love," she responded coolly in her Scottish accent. "I've been keeping an eye on you, Mr. Connor. You've done quite well."

Somehow her words calmed him. It was true. He'd grown up quite a bit in the short couple of months he'd been there. Was it all a test? Was this all some sort of elaborate training program? _Future Messiah Boot Camp?_ Either way, he couldn't argue the fact that he was happier here than he had been in 2009. "So what now? Why do you show up, after all these weeks?"

"Because, Mr. Connor. It's time to go. Time meet up with John Henry."

John had all but forgotten about John Henry. He'd written off the idea that he'd ever get Cameron's chip back. He almost laughed at himself when he thought about how devastated he was when he saw Cameron's lifeless chassis sitting in the chair in that room. Now that he had experienced love--_real_ love--with Allison, the crush he recalled having on his robot bodyguard seemed almost comical to him. None the less, he was still interested in meeting this "John Henry", and if it were possible to talk with Cameron once again, be it through a computer interface, or by finding another Terminator chassis in which to install her chip, he would like to seize the opportunity. If for nothing more than to thank Cameron for saving his life. "You know where to meet him... it?"

Weaver cocked her head a bit in disappointment when John referred to John Henry as "it". "I know where he'll be, and when he'll be there. Now let's go. We don't have much time." She turned to walk out of the bathroom.

"Wait. Allison is still in my room." He worried that she would wake up, realize he was missing, and then come looking for him. He didn't want her finding out about his collaboration with machines... at least not yet.

"She'll be fine. She is in a deep post-coital sleep, and will likely remain that way for another three to four hours." John looked at Weaver skeptically. She responded by saying, "I was there immediately before I came here. There were traces of both male and female human pheromones in the air, so I came to the conclusion that the two of you had recently engaged in..."

"Alright!" John said, slightly embarrassed. For some odd reason he almost felt like he'd been caught by his mother. "Let's go then."

* * *

Weaver and John stood for a few minutes in the same room in which they had time-traveled several weeks ago. "Are you sure you have the time right?" _Or the correct year?_ John asked under his breath.

"The time portal should open up in exactly thirty four seconds."

John began counting to himself. _One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand... _When he got to "twenty-nine-one-thousand" a spark of light lit up the room like a camera's flashbulb. Then another. Then electricity started to spark, and the smell of ozone filled the air. A mysterious wind blew through the subterranean room. More and more tendrils of electricity arced out from what was now a distinguishable sphere in the middle of the room. The sphere grew brighter and more solid looking. John had never seen a time bubble open up before, so he stared at it in stunned wonderment. At the last second, the bubble grew so bright he could no longer look at it and had to shield his eyes with his arm. Then, as though someone shut off a light switch, it was dark, silent and still. The time bubble burned away a smoking hemispherical crater in the floor, and in the center of it laid a collapsed, lifeless looking body which he recognized only as Cromartie.


	12. Coming Full Circle, Part 1

* * *

**Author's notes:  
Special thanks to BOTH of my beta readers, the AwesomeAustrian and JMHthe3rd.**

* * *

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 12 – Coming Full Circle, Part 1**

ZIERA CORP. BASEMENT – 2030

There was a bright flash, maxing out the optic sensors that made up the eyes of the body she was now living in. Next came the sensation of falling clumsily to the floor as the chair that was supporting the body vanished. Still unable to move John Henry's body, Cameron waited for something to happen. She had no information on what John Henry had planned on doing once he arrived in the future other than to meet with Catherine Weaver.

She stared at the ceiling, unable to look around and survey the area. The audio receptors began feeding information to her.

"Cromartie!" She heard a young man's voice exclaim. It was John's. "Why would you use that thing to build your supposed 'Skynet-Stopper'?"

Then, another voice spoke. This one an accented woman's voice. "It was a gift from Mr. Ellison. It was only slightly damaged, and provided a perfect opportunity to test John Henry's ability to manipulate organic compounds."

She heard footsteps, and then John appeared in her red-hued vision, standing over her and looking down. "Why isn't it moving?" he said, crouching down and poking at the cheek of the cyborg body.

Next, the woman came into view. "I'm not sure. Something seems to be wrong."

"Where is Cameron's chip? He took it didn't he?" John asked.

"The chip is installed inside this body," the woman responded. "Something is wrong though. He is unresponsive."

"He?" John asked. "I thought it was Cameron's chip in this thing."

"John Henry was to format the chip, then install himself on to it. Those were his instructions."

"Format the chip?!?" Cameron could sense panic in John's voice. _He cares for me, _she thought. "So Cameron is gone? Deleted? DEAD??" John's heightened stress level was causing Cameron to feel upset. She wanted to speak to him, but couldn't activate the voice controller in the body.

_No! John! I'm here! I didn't go away! _she shouted within her chip, her own voice echoing through her neural pathways. The resolution of the available ocular sensors was much lower than what she was accustomed to, but she could still see a tear on John's cheek. _Don't cry, John. It seems I've failed you, but I haven't left you. _

"Yes. Deleted," the woman responded to John. "You're upset? You're in love with Allison Young now."

_Allison Young?_ Cameron searched her database. When she discovered who Allison was and uncovered some memory files that were supposed to have been deleted by future-John, Cameron began to feel warm and contented. She was happy that John had taken a human lover, and also filled with an odd feeling of absolution. She had tortured and then killed Allison in a different timeline, so under the assumption that John's love for Allison was mutual, Cameron felt somehow slightly vindicated. John was happy; therefore she was happy for him. Maybe she hadn't completely failed her mission after all.

"I _am_ in love with Allison," John barked. "But that doesn't mean I wanted Cameron dead." He turned back to look into the eyes of Cromartie's body. "I would have liked to say goodbye."

In her peripheral, she saw the fingers on the woman's right hand morph into a tool that resembled pliers. "I need to extract and inspect this chip. Something went wrong."

John stood up and walked out of her field of vision. "Do what you need to do," she heard John say in a defeated voice.

_No! John... I'm still here! It's not goodbye! You can fix me! Don't leave! John! JOHN!!!_

***

"Do what you need to do," John said as he wiped his eyes dry with the sleeve of his shirt. He thought that he had convinced himself that he was "over" Cameron. He'd been happy thinking of her as a bucket of bolts instead of a friend. It had made it easier to deal with the fact that he never got any form of closure with her. But seeing Weaver's tool-like fingers extract the chip that he recognized as the brain and soul of his former friend caused those feelings he experienced his first night in this world to come flooding back.

He questioned again if he ever loved Cameron. The attraction to her physical nature was undeniable, as was the feeling of companionship he felt with her. Separately those two feelings didn't add up to love or romance, even though it seemed like they should. He felt companionship with his childhood dog, Max, but no physical attraction. And he felt physical attraction to a Playboy centerfold, but there was no companionship to be had from a piece of paper. Cameron offered both. It was like all the ingredients to form a romantic, loving relationship were there, but they just wouldn't mix. Emotional companionship and physical attraction. Oil and water. Why? There had to be something missing from the equation; some sort of solvent to allow the oil to mix with the water. There had to be some reason why he had never felt for Cameron the same indescribable contentment that he feels now with Allison. There was no answer. There is no magic equation that defines the enigmatic nature of love. It either happens or it doesn't.

He decided once and for all that he did not love Cameron. Not now, not ever; but she was still his friend. He still cared for her, and he wanted some sort of explanation to why his friend was now gone.

"Something went wrong, huh?" he asked, sniffling a little. "What _exactly_ was the plan, then?"

"The plan, Mr. Connor, is always evolving. Originally, I had planned to use a T eight eight eight chip to copy John Henry onto, bring him to this time, and plug him into Skynet's mainframe. I would monitor his fight against Skynet, noting his strengths and weaknesses, then bring that information back to 2009 and improve John Henry."

John was shocked. "So this is all just an elaborate R and D field trip? What the hell is my role then? Why bring me here if you knew your goddamned science project was going to format and destroy the only thing I wanted to come here for?" He was becoming increasingly angry with the liquid metal Terminator. "Was this all a ruse to get me to come here to 'grow up' as well?" he spat, using his fingers as quotation marks.

She curtly responded, "Yes, this is a research mission. I needed you to come along because I was unable to recover a viable T triple eight CPU to use for this experiment."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"Skynet began building self-destruct mechanisms into the Terminator CPUs, so that they could not be reprogrammed by you. By jumping over the time period when you would be doing such things, Skynet had no reason to employ this feature, and the Terminators of this time are capable of being reprogrammed."

"How did you know I would come along? What if I would have chosen to stay in 2009 and fight Skynet with my mom?"

"Then I would have... _persuaded_ you to come with me," she said, coldly. "But I was pleased that you made the correct choice."

John was incredulous. He felt like such an insignificant pawn in this game; being moved around without any care to his wellbeing. He could have died several times since he was here. This was madness!

"Skynet knows you're here now though," the T-1001 added.

"What? How? I'm a nobody! I haven't led any resistance movement."

"Not in this timeline, you haven't. But all of the Terminators that had been sent back in time to kill you were from a time when General Connor was a serious threat to Skynet's existence. Those machines carried that knowledge for the last twenty years. One of the T-six-hundreds you battled weeks ago matched your face to the records that Skynet had on file. Conveniently for Skynet, you look the same now as you did back then."

"But..." John was beginning to panic. He thought he was finally safe from the machines--relatively safe, anyway. "They don't know where I'm at though, right? I mean... we flanked them that day, and there's no way they could have figured out were our bunker is."

"Someone informed Skynet of the Reese-camp's location eighteen hours ago."

John's jaw dropped. "What?!? A traitor?? Who the fu... GOMEZ!! That mother fucker!!! He's been gone a few days. Probably ratted us out and took off! I wouldn't put it past that son of a BITCH!!" John was enraged beyond anything he had ever felt. "Shit!! We gotta go warn them!" He began to move toward the door.

"No," Weaver responded.

"What?! What do you mean, NO??" John was panting, ready to kill someone, or something. "We have to help them! My father is there! Allison is there!!! I can't let anything happen to her!"

Suddenly John's march toward the door was halted when he felt a handcuff around his wrist pulling him backward. "No." Weaver repeated, holding John's hand in a perfectly form-fitted shackle protruding from her arm. "It's too dangerous. Skynet has deployed twenty T-eight hundreds to that position. You would be injured and most likely killed."

"Let me go!! I don't care if it's dangerous! I have to save Allison! Let me go you metal pile of shh..." his speech froze when he heard the echoing sound of machinegun fire coming from the direction of his bunker. Quieter, more muffled shots followed. Plasma fire. Then screaming. Then more gunfire.

With tears of frustration and anger in his eyes, John turned and looked at Weaver's unemotional face. "You hear that??" he growled at her. "That's the sound of my friends dying! Let me GO!!!"

The sound of heavy, metallic footsteps approached the room John and Weaver were in. John pulled out the only weapon he had, a Glock pistol, and readied it, waiting to unload as much lead as possible at the unstoppable metal beast as soon as it came through the door. "No." Weaver said as she grabbed the gun from John's hand and threw it across the room.

"What are you doing??! You expect me to punch and kick at the thing? How stupid are you?? I'm a sitting du..." He couldn't finish his rant because his mouth was filled with liquid metal. He felt the cold viscous blob expand in his mouth and down his throat to the point where he could not make a sound. A small pathway for air was left in the metal gag so he wouldn't suffocate. Next, he felt cold metal wrap completely around his body. It was the oddest sensation John had ever felt. It was hard and viscous enough that he could not move, however it felt soft, like liquid silk, covering every inch of his skin. If he wasn't feeling so much rage and hate, it would have almost been a pleasurable experience.

When the menacing T-800 busted through the door, all it saw was a naked cyborg body on the floor, a broken table, and an uninteresting locker against the wall. Sensing no movement or signs of life, it moved on.

John could still hear the sounds of shooting and screaming reverberating through the liquid metal that filled his ear canal. Feeling completely helpless, John wept.

* * *

Allison was roused from her slumber by the sound of gunfire. She jumped up from the bed and quickly scrambled to find clothing. _Metal! Shit... Where's my pants? Where's John?? _She managed to find her underwear, but her pants were out of sight; strewn about with the rest of her clothes. The best she could find was John's tactical overcoat hanging on a hook next to the bed, so she threw it on. She looked around for a weapon, but before she could find anything the door to John's quarters swung open.

A chrome, red-eyed T-800 leveled its plasma rifle at Allison' chest. It paused, looking at her for a moment, and it noted the patch sewn onto the coat she was wearing.

***

_CONNOR_

_Analyzing... possible relative or spouse of target, John Connor. _

_Action: INCAPACITATE. CAPTURE ALIVE. _

***

Much to Allison's surprise, the machine lowered its weapon. For a brief half of a second, she thought it might deem her a non-threat and leave her alone. Then it dawned on her that since it didn't fire its weapon immediately that it must have wanted her alive. It was common knowledge among refugees and resistance fighters that being captured alive by Skynet was a fate much, much worse than death. Allison was filled with an intense dread.

The woman that killed a T-600 in a furious rage; the woman who beat the hell out of a guy twice her size with a metal chair; that woman was gone. In that moment all that was left was the same scared little girl that cowered against the wall of a privacy-room in Burbank waiting to be some bastard's "treat" for the evening.

She began to whimper and take steps backward until she bumped into the concrete wall. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. She closed her eyes and awaited her fate.

The machine advanced on her and punched her in the forehead with its metal fist, knocking her unconscious.

* * *

John didn't know how long he was trapped in the liquid metal bindings. Hours? A day or more? Even though he couldn't move a muscle, he was oddly comfortable. It was like floating in water. The feeling of being coddled like a baby made him feel at peace after a while. It was soothing, and he swore he felt the liquid contracting and loosening on parts of his limbs, almost like getting a full body massage... or like being felt up by some freakish alien life-form. He pushed that thought out of his head and took a deep breath as he felt hundreds of tiny fingertips work the knots in his back muscles. It felt so damn good that he didn't even mind the fact that he was bound and gagged. Even the memories of the shooting and screaming had left his mind, and he could only imagine himself on a beach, laying in the soft sand as water washed up around him and tickled his bare skin. His mind swam in a semiconscious nirvana, and eventually he slowly fell asleep. He slept for an undetermined amount of time, and woke up when he felt the metal gag in his throat start to recede. All of the bondage that held him in place started to flow off of him like a giant pile of metallic mucus.

He was too emotionally drained to even be mad at the T-1001 anymore. He just collapsed to the floor, leaned up against the wall and tried not to remember the screams and pleads for mercy he'd heard hours ago.

The T-1001 re-formed into a female human-like form, but stayed featureless and colorless. "We should go see if there are any survivors," it said. How was it even speaking? It had no mouth. The sound of the voice just came from it, like it was a ghost or something. It creeped John the hell out.

"Survivors?" John weakly asked. "I thought Skynet would have killed everyone."

"Everyone it could find," it responded. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

John didn't respond. He just picked himself up from the ground, glared at the creepy metal statue and walked out of the room to make his way back to the resistance bunker.

* * *

"Tell me your name," a digitized voice spoke from behind a bright interrogation light.

Allison laughed defiantly. "Go to hell, metal."

"Tell me your name," the voice repeated. A T-888 approached her and held her arm in place as it aimed a laser inscriber at her forearm. When Allison still remained silent the machine activated the inscriber, branding her with a barcode.

Allison tried to contain herself, but it was too intense. She cried out in pain, then felt nauseous when she smelled her own flesh cooking.

"Tell me your name, or we'll cover your entire body with this."

She couldn't stand the thought of being burned alive. She had to tell them something. They had no idea who she was, so why bother with the truth? She pulled a name out of her head; one that had been buzzing around in there like a bothersome fly. "Cameron," she told them, then combined it with her father's name. "Cameron Phillips".

* * *

As he made his way back to his quarters in the resistance bunker, John began to feel sick. The closer he got, the more blood, bodies, body parts, and shell casings littered the tunnels. Small fires burned here and there. The revolting smell of burned flesh and death permeated everything. It was an absolute massacre. It was especially hard when he saw people he recognized. He saw Sully's head twisted unnaturally on his lifeless body. In a different area, he saw Xiao's body, dead, and missing an arm. He actually felt bad for being furiously mad at the guy at one time.

When he finally made it to his own quarters, he almost didn't want to push the door open. He was expecting to see Allison, the only woman he'd ever really loved, lying in a pool of her own blood. John rested his forehead against the door for a couple seconds, took a deep breath, and then went inside. She was gone.

John didn't know what to think. A mixture of panic and hope filled his mind. _Could she still be alive, or did she just get murdered in a different area?_

He ran from his quarters and frantically started searching other rooms and passageways. The T-1001 kept a close step behind him, but after a few minutes of searching the area, it stopped John. "She's not here, Mr. Connor," the T-1001 told him, still in its generic, blank-human form.

"How would you know?" John yelled, his emotions getting the better of him. "I haven't checked everywhere yet. She could still be here! She could be injured or unconscious!" He continued running from room to room, ignoring the bodies of other soldiers he found in each one. When he came to a door that said "Reese" on it, he slowed his pace, and slowly opened the door. He saw Derek sitting on the floor, holding the hand of another soldier's body. The body lying next to Derek had a huge hole in its chest; the result of a direct hit from a plasma rifle. John took a couple steps closer and recognized the face of the dead man.

"Dad???" John choked out.

***

Derek heard someone enter the room, but didn't bother to look up. He kept his eyes focused on his brother's dead face. He didn't want to talk to anyone right now, even if they were a survivor of the horror that had just been unleashed on them. But when he heard John's familiar voice asking for his father, he looked up with obvious confusion in his reddened, wet eyes. "John? What are you..." The confused expression on his face quickly turned to panicked rage as he shot up from the floor and shoved John to the side.

"METAL!!!" he screamed as he shouldered his M4 and unloaded every bullet it contained into the mirror-like humanoid thing standing behind John. When his weapon was empty, he watched in utter disbelief as the bullet holes he'd just put into the mysterious creature just shrank until they were gone. The wounds seem to flow into themselves like it was... _Liquid metal_. He had heard rumors of Skynet developing some sort of super advanced machine. Something so powerful that it would change everything. Skynet was developing an actual metal-based life form. Of course this was all speculation and rumor, and nobody really believed it, but here it stood; right in front of him.

Derek dropped his gun to the floor. He didn't know what to say or do. He simply stared at it in awe. It was real. It was like meeting the Boogey-Man, or the Tooth-Fairy, or freaking Santa Clause. As he watched its arms change shape into sword-like blades, he didn't even make an attempt to fight back or run away. He just stood still, like he had just looked into the eyes of a metal Medusa and turned to stone.

"No! Stop!" John yelled, while jumping in front of Derek. "Stop! He didn't know!"

The liquid metal thing stopped its advance on Derek, and retracted its blades, shifting them back to arms and hands.

"What? What don't I know?" Derek asked with equal parts confusion and anger.

"It... the T one thousand... she's here to help."

"She?? John... have you lost your mind?" Derek's jaw dropped a little further as the T-1001 refined its shape into a human woman with long black hair and Asian features.

He wanted to say her name, but no words came to his lips. Seeing the visage of his long deceased lover made Derek wonder if this was all some kind of dream. Yeah, that had to be it. A nightmare that he would wake up from soon enough. None the less, he reached out to caress her cheek, tears spilling form his eyes. Her skin, or whatever the hell it was, felt real. Her hair felt soft like he remembered. Oh God, this was so difficult! She smiled at Derek, which made him miss her even more. Was this some kind of cruel joke? "Why are you doing this?" he asked, softly, still holding her cheek.

The T-1001 returned to its neutral form, and said "I thought you would fear me less in that form. I was correct. You are now calmer than before. Do not attack me again, Mr. Reese."

***

John watched the fear in Derek's face melt away, and get replaced with a painfully sad look of longing when Weaver made herself look like Jesse. Why did it do that? Was it trying to calm Derek down with a familiar face? _The T-1000 must be smart enough to use tactics other than brute force,_ John mused, recalling how it had given him an incredibly relaxing massage while it was holding him still and hidden during the Skynet attack.

John turned away, allowing Derek to have a moment to himself, for whatever that moment meant to him. Upon doing do, John looked back down at the body of Kyle Reese on the floor. How could Kyle be dead? How was John still in existence? How could he even be standing there looking at the body of the man who has yet to conceive him? _Kyle, but not my father,_ John reminded himself. _Different timelines... different futures._ John didn't even try to wrap his head around the concept of alternate timelines, time paradox, or any of that. The temporal mechanics of the time-space continuum might prove that this Kyle was not his father, and the Derek standing over there wasn't really his uncle, but goddamnit... they were still people. People he cared about.

People he cared about, yes... like... "Allison!" He suddenly started to panic again. "Derek!" he said, breaking the older man's trance as he stared at his reflection in the T-1001's shiny surface. "Derek, have you seen Allison anywhere?"

Derek looked over to John, and muttered, "No. I..."

"She's most likely been taken captive," said Weaver. "If Skynet was looking for you, Mr. Connor, and she was sleeping in your quarters, the next course of action would be to capture her alive."

"Oh God... what are they going to do with her?" John asked, but he already knew the answer. _Is this how it all happens? This is this how it all starts, isn't it? Cameron... _John imagined a machine peeling Allison's skin back from her face like a meat-mask and laying it onto a gleaming metal skull. He wanted to scream.

Weaver responded without emotion. "Interrogation, torture, experimentation, and replacement. Skynet will use her as a template in the TOK project which will produce the cyborg assassin you have come to know as Cameron. She will likely undergo several psychological and biological experiments as well in Skynet's research and development facility on board the U.S.S. Ronald Regan."

John Shuddered. _Torture? Experimentation? Jesus... _John tried not to think about the unthinkable, and instead attempted to focus on the facts. He needed to figure out a way to prevent it all from happening. "The Ronald Regan? Is that some kind of Navy ship?" John asked.

"Aircraft carrier," Derek responded. He was still in somewhat of a daze. He couldn't take his eyes off the liquid metal creature in front of him. His eyes were locked on it, studying its curves, its shiny, reflective surface. Then he noticed the reflection of Kyle's dead body. _Oh God... Kyle... _He snapped out of his trance for a moment and addressed John more directly. "The machines keep it anchored about a quarter mile off the coast. No way to get there though..." His eyes moved like magnets back to the T-1001. "hydrobots... in the water."

"What about flying there? Doesn't anyone have a helicopter still running around here somewhere?" John asked in a panic.

"None of the resistance camps I have visited in the past two months possess any airworthy helicopters," the T-1001 responded. "It's a moot point anyway, Mr. Connor. Even an RAH-66 Comanche helicopter would be easily spotted and shot down by aerial HKs."

John was about to raise his voice and start cussing, but he choked on his own words. He simply looked down and watched a pair of tears fall to the floor. He had lost everything. His mother was gone, his father had half his torso blown apart, Cameron had been erased from her chip, and now the thought of rescuing Allison was slipping away.

"What if we had a fighter jet?" Derek asked.

John looked up at his pseudo-uncle with contempt. Was he mocking him? Was he rubbing it in that there was no way in holy-hell that there was any chance of saving Allison? Or maybe he'd just gone completely insane. John huffed and glared at Derek. "Yeah... like someone's just got a spare F-15 laying around."

"Not an F-15. A Harrier. Carlos Gomez told me about it once."

"Gomez! That traitor?! He's full of shit!" John was simply beside himself. _That prick would say anything to get a rise out of people._ John thought about it, shaking his head. He let out a frustrated chuckle. "He should have said someone had a Cessna or something... at least that would have been believable." He was actually a little disappointed in Derek for being so gullible. "A Harrier! Ha! What kind of an idiot would even believe that?"

Derek thinned his eyes and took a step toward John. "_This_ idiot would."

John wiped the smirk off his face and swallowed hard, seeing Derek finally peel his eyes away from the T-1001 and accost him.

"What makes _you_ the expert all of a sudden?" Derek spat. "Are you forgetting that up until about eight or nine years ago, we still had a couple of A-10s in the air? Is it so hard to believe that those Burbank assholes have been sitting on a working Harrier?"

"Burbank?" John asked, mostly to himself.

"Yeah. Maybe you didn't know, but Gomez used to live there. He left because those pussies refused to use any of their heavy firepower against the machines. Cowards." Derek just shook his head. "It doesn't matter though. We'd never be able to get it. They have phalanx cannons, surface-to-air missiles, and who knows what else in that place."

"But we have something they don't." John said, pointing to the T-1001. He then turned to the chrome female mannequin and asked it, "What do you say? Will you help us?"

* * *

**Author's notes:  
This was originally going to be one long final chapter, but I decided to break it up into two parts. So, you get another cliffhanger ending... and get to wait a couple more weeks for the conclusion in "Coming Full Circle, Part 2".  
**


	13. Coming Full Circle, Part 2

**Author's note:  
I know I said last time that this was going to be the last chapter, but it was just getting too long, so I decided to make the two-part finale into 3 parts. **

* * *

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 13 – Coming Full Circle, Part 2**

BURBANK

"You think this will actually work?" a skeptical Derek asked as they hiked through the ruined landscape, approaching the Burbank enclave.

"You tell me. You probably know these guys better than I do, Derek. I've only been here a couple months," John responded.

Was this kid really that delusional? He couldn't seriously think that he was from the year 2009. "Yeah... right. The time machine." Derek rolled his eyes. "I keep forgetting." He didn't know what made John crazier; the insanity that he had told him about fighting machines in the past and his brother being the kid's time-traveling father, or the fact that he expected him to buy that line of bullshit. He decided to play along in order to avoid causing any strife. He'd been through enough shit for one day and didn't want to cause any conflict with the only person he knew who was still breathing. "Yeah... I think it will work." He turned to look at the T-1001, who had taken the form of Catherine Weaver again. "She... it... that _thing_ might have to sex it up a bit though."

"Sex it up?" Weaver asked, genuinely.

"Yeah. You might be a little... old looking for these Burbank guys," Derek said, felt slightly guilty for saying it. Why would he feel guilt though? It was a machine... sort of. He couldn't hurt its "feelings." _Why is it giving me an annoyed look? Can't it make itself look like whatever it wants?_

Without argument, Weaver reshaped her body, but only subtly. Her features smoothed out and became more youthful looking, her hair developed a slightly waviness, and the curves of her body became more prominent and voluptuous. "Is this better, Mr. Reese? I've extrapolated what the human I copied would have looked like at age nineteen."

Derek was in at a loss for words. The changes were small, but she now looked so much like someone he once knew that it was eerie. The liquid metal woman stared at him, waiting for a response. Derek blinked and shook his head slightly. "Sorry... you just... you look just like that backstabbing bitch Savannah."

* * *

"Where are you from, Cameron?" asked the mechanical interrogator.

"You know exactly where I'm from. You just took me from my home," Allison spat.

"Where did you live before that?"

"What the hell do you care?"

"I want to get to know you, Cameron."

Allison sneered at the spotlight. "Get to know me? Ha! That's a new one!"

"It would be in your best interest to answer my questions honestly, accurately, and promptly. Now tell me where you grew up."

_This is ridiculous,_ Allison thought, shaking her head. She had no idea why they were asking irrelevant questions. Maybe it was some sort of baseline, or control variable in a complex lie detection system. _Oh well... _she said to herself, rubbing the blistering skin where the barcode was burned into her arm. Giving up pointless information was certainly better than more torture.

"Palmdale. Until I was eight. Then I..." she paused, trying not to remember her stay at Burbank.

"Then what?" it insisted

"Then I went to Hell," she said in a commanding voice and with hard eyes. She wasn't able to hold on to her composure for very long though. A moment or two of thinking about all those years of abuse and torment made it impossible to hold back the sadness in her eyes.

"Describe, Hell," it coldly demanded.

Allison squeezed her eyes shut and pushed the tears from them. She took a deep breath in attempt to calm herself. "Burbank," she said, and sat with her eyes closed for a few moments, recalling what she could. "Burbank was Hell. Hell was being fed lard and fat every day to make my body softer and more voluptuous. Hell was being treated as nothing more than an object." Spite and anger filled her voice. "Hell was sitting in a room, waiting for your name to be called, and watching your friend break down in tears when her name was called instead. Hell was a guy placing a hammer on a table next to the bed and telling you that for every tooth he felt, he would knock one out."

"You were forced to make love to the men of Burbank?"

"No. That was one thing that no threat or force could make me, or any of the other girls do. I was forced to do just about every sexual thing imaginable, but love was something I never did. You even asking me that makes me want to vomit."

"Love and sexual relations are not mutual?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes it's just for fun, sometimes for food, and sometimes..." Allison stopped her self and considered just how uncommon "making love" probably was. In that moment she also realized the absurdity of discussing her sex-life with a goddamned robot. What was this? Why the hell did Skynet care about human relationships? "What do you want from me?"

"What is the nature of your relationship with John Connor?"

Allison eyes went wide with the mention of John's name. Did they capture him too? He never came back to his quarters before the attack. Was he in another interrogation room being subjected to the same bullshit line of questioning? What if their stories didn't match? Would they hurt him for lying? All her anger was washed away, replaced by worry. "Is he alive? Please... I'll answer your questions. Don't hurt him. He hasn't even been with the Resistance very long... only a couple months."

"What is the nature of your relationship with John Connor?" the machine repeated.

_Oh, John... _She decided that the only way to be sure was to be honest from this point forward. "John Connor and I... I love him," she said with defeat.

* * *

"Who the hell are you?" demanded an armed guard at the front gates of the old Warner Brothers studio in Burbank.

John averted his eyes from the barrel of the guard's MP5 submachine gun, and glanced up to see one of the 20mm Vulcan cannons on the top of the wall pointing down at them. "M-my name is John. Baum." Nervousness would help sell this act, but he hardly had to act. "This is my friend, Derek, and my sister... Savannah. The machines... they attacked our camp. We seek refuge."

"Nobody stays here for free, bud," the guard said, eyeing the girl, and grinning.

John feigned a horrified look on his face, and responded, "No! I've heard what goes on here. I won't let that happen to my sister!"

"Like I said, kid. Nobody stays for free. And as far as I can tell, you ain't got much in the way of food, or ammo, so you better consider offerin' up your only valuable asset... unless of course you'd rather stay out there," he sneered, pointing toward the HKs and their searchlights off in the distance.

A second man appeared behind the guard. He was shorter, and fairly scrawny, but with a bit of a gut. "Stand down soldier," he said to the guard, who still had is gun trained on John.

"Sorry, Mr. Sparrow, sir," the guard replied, then dropped his gun to his side, and stepped out of the way.

"This is no way to treat guests. We can talk inside. It's dangerous out here," Sparrow said, smiling at John and Derek, then at "Savannah."

John and Derek exchanged a glance before following him through the armored door. They walked through the commons area of the compound. Sparrow pointed things out like a tour guide, bragging about all of the amenities that they enjoyed at Burbank, and nowhere else in the burnt-out world.

When the short "tour" ended, Sparrow said to them, "As you can see, this is the best place in the world to lead a machine-free life. You can either stay here and work, earning your keep, or your can go back out the door you came in, and probably be dead before dawn."

"What happens to her if we stay?" John asked.

Sparrow placed his hand on the girl's cheek, looking at her like one would look at a show dog or horse. Weaver mimicked shame, and turned her head away while looking down. "Same thing that happens if you leave," Sparrow said, grinning. "What did you say her name was? Savannah? Pretty name for a pretty girl. Yeah... she'll fit right in here." He slid his hand down her side and cupped her buttocks. "Oh yes... I might make her one of my exclusive girls."

John held back the urge to lunge at Sparrow and choke him to death. He knew the T-1001 could take care of itself. Hell, it probably wouldn't even mind being Sparrow's bitch. _No different than any other task to complete a mission, _he thought. What bothered John, what made him see red, was that Allison went through this as well. This deplorable son of a bitch probably had his hands all over Allison at some point.

Sparrow could see John's building rage, and said, "Hey, don't worry, chief. We treat our women great here as long as they understand what their duties are, and they perform them well. The better job she does, the easier her life will be. And seeing as how you brought her here, her good work will be rewarded to you and your friend here as well.

John swallowed hard, and reminded himself that they would be out of here as soon as they found the Harrier. He needed to agree to Sparrows terms, but he didn't know how he could realistically just agree to sell his supposed sister into prostitution. _This Sparrow guy is no idiot. He'll know something is up._ This was Derek's cue to try to convince John to go along with it. Derek was just "a friend" and wouldn't have the same attachment to "Savannah" as her "brother". _Damnit, Derek. I need you here._

It was Weaver who saved the act. "John... Don't worry. If it's this, or death by the hands of an angry machine somewhere out there, then I'll do what I have to do." She even managed to push a pair of tears out of her eyes as she said it.

_Damn, she's good,_ John thought before responding in a whisper, "Okay." To round out the act, he took Weaver into his arms and hugged her tight. "I love you, Sis... stay strong."

"It's just a job," she responded, sobbing. "It's just a job."

He knew she was acting, but Jesus... he was getting choked up. _Good... use that,_ he thought, and pushed himself to shed a few tears as they parted ways, and were directed towards their dormitory.

* * *

Weaver stumbled as she was shoved through a door was that was subsequently slammed behind her. _That was unnecessary,_ she thought.

She scanned the room and found that she was in what appeared to be a warehouse or possibly a studio, converted into a barracks. It was a large single room with two rows of bunk beds. There were 34 other girls and women of varying age and race in the room. Some were sitting on the bunks reading, some sleeping, some were talking amongst each other. Several sat silently to themselves, sobbing quietly. All were dressed in provocative lingerie of varying colors and styles.

Weaver found an empty bunk that appeared to be unclaimed, and sat on it. She ran her fingertips over the fishnet stockings she had been given to wear, observing the texture. She had never worn human clothes before. It felt odd to her to be encased in something. The high-heeled shoes bothered her the most. It was almost like they were intended to disrupt one's balance and hinder one's mobility. _Why would humans wear such inefficient garments?_ she wondered as she tugged at her stiff corset.

A man walked into the room a few moments later, and one of the women playing cards with two others rolled her eyes and said, "Shit. Here comes Eugene." She tossed her hand of cards into the middle of the table and stood up, putting on a fake smile. "Hey there, Huge-Euge'. I was wonderin' where you were today." She clung to him and they walked to the door at the opposite end of the room.

Weaver pondered the actions of the woman. _Some of the women seem to have accepted their fates here at Burbank. Mostly the older ones. The younger females appear much more distressed_.

A voice rang out over the intercom system in the barracks.

_Susan Richardson, report to privacy room four. Susan Richardson, room four__._

A girl whom Weaver estimated to be fifteen years old looked up from the small tattered photograph she was holding. When she heard her name repeated, she began crying and stood up, slowly walking toward the same door that the older woman and Eugene exited through a few moments ago. Two of the older women rushed over to Susan to comfort her.

"It's okay, honey. Just close your eyes and pretend it's your boyfriend," one of them said. "Just pray it ain't Sparrow... that bastard likes to play rough."

The other woman chimed in with, "Damnit Gloria... you tryin' to scare the shit outta the poor girl? Susie, just remember, as long as you do a good job, they're usually pretty gentle, especially with you younger ones."

The girl didn't appear to be any less distressed as the two women saw her off through the door at the far end.

Weaver approached the two women who were obviously veterans in Burbank. "Ladies," she started, "Have either of you ever serviced one of the heavy weapons operators? If so, I have a couple questions for you."

* * *

"Your eyes... They're so pretty," said a distorted robotic voice. "We've worked very hard to get them right, but so far have been unsuccessful."

Allison squinted at the bright interrogation light. "Yeah? Good! Makes it easier to tell if someone is a tin-can... just look into their dead, rubbery eyes."

"We're very close to replicating a human eye, however at this time it's still more efficient to use a human donor."

Allison's smug expression suddenly evaporated. Dread flooded her heart and made her stomach churn as she put two and two together. "No," she said, shaking her head, and pushing her chair back from the table.

When a T-888 emerged from behind the light and stepped toward her, she shot up from her seat and tried to run to the door. She made it about two steps before the Terminator grabbed her by the neck and pulled her over to the table in the room.

The T-888 slammed her down onto her back on the cold steel table. Her panicked struggles to break free did nothing more than cause pain on her neck where the metal hand held her. She could do nothing now, but look up at the bright light on the ceiling, and the two silhouettes hovering above her. Each of the dark shadows contained a pair of glowing eyes; two were red, and the other set glowed blue.

An apparatus was placed on her head, and a set of hooks held her eyelids open. Not able to shield her vision from the blinding light, she rolled her eyes back in her head in attempt to look away from the painful brightness. She was relieved when a second item was placed on the apparatus which blocked the light, however that relief was short lived when she realized what it was. Her breathing sped up to short rapid gasps and her heart slammed wildly, like someone hitting her chest repeatedly with a hammer. She was now staring up at a small claw like device that slowly lowered itself closer and closer until she was unable to focus on it.

Allison's blood curdling screams echoed throughout the metal corridors of the U.S.S. Ronald Regan.

* * *

_SAVANNAH BAUM, report to privacy room ONE. SAVANNAH BAUM, ROOM ONE__._

Weaver stood up from the bed she was patiently sitting on and began walking to the door at the end of the room.

Gloria looked up from her hand of cards and called out to Weaver, "Be strong, girl! Remember what we talked about!"

Weaver gave a curt nod to Gloria. The women of the harem were impressed with her ability to stay strong during her first call. Most women didn't get used to it for months, and some never did. To be so confident on the first day was unheard of.

As Weaver walked, she adjusted to the high heels she was wearing. She had worn heels before, but they had always been an extension of herself, and therefore easy to control. These were just extra junk strapped to her body, and she hated them.

After pushing open the door, she was in a hallway with four doors on either side, numbered one through eight. She grabbed the handle of the one nearest to her left, which had a large "1" on it.

The privacy room was mostly empty, save for a bed, a chair, some sort of swing contraption hanging from the ceiling, and a sink on one wall. She sat on the chair, crossed her legs, and waited.

Moments later the door's latch clicked and the hinges screeched as the door opened.

She recognized the man from earlier, and stood up. "Mr. Sparrow, you're my first assignment," she said with a touch of enthusiasm in her voice.

"Of course I am, Savannah. I get first dibs on all the new whores. If I like 'em, they're exclusively mine. One of the perks for being boss."

"Any perks for being one of your exclusives?"

Sparrow smiled. He could see this girl wanted to impress him. This was going to be a good time. "Yeah. My top five live with me in my chamber, instead of in this dingy barracks. You get better food too. Oh, and the better job you do, the better treatment your brother and his buddy get... just kind of a side-perk... call it a commission if you want, since he brought you here and all."

"That's generous of you Mr. Sparrow."

"Yeah," he said, grinning. He strode over to where she was standing and put his arms around her waist. "I think you'll find that we're really a good bunch here at Burbank."

Weaver ran her fingers up under Sparrow's shirt. "Would the others consider you a 'good bunch', Mr. Sparrow?"

"What do you mean by 'others'?"

"I mean the other groups of people that you and your boys pillage. You steal, kill, and enslave your fellow humans. That hardly seems like something a 'good bunch' of men would do."

Sparrow slapped Weaver across the face. "Now you listen to me you little slut. I don't want to hear any more political bullshit out of your mouth. You need to learn your place here. Now get down on your knees."

Weaver's expression turned from playfully snarky, to cold and threatening. She lowered herself to her knees, and pulled Sparrow's pants down to his ankles.

'That's a good girl," he said and gasped a bit as she ran her fingers up the top of his thighs. "Anything else you'd like to say before your mouth is too full to talk?"

"Yes. I made a friend today."

"Ya don't say. Who is it?"

"Her name is Gloria. She told me interesting things about her clients. Did you know that one of the surface to air missile operators doesn't like the privacy rooms?"

"What's his problem? We keep 'em clean. The girls clean 'em up after each session," he said a bit puzzled.

"Apparently it is sexually arousing for him to be serviced in the control room. Gloria has been there many times. I asked her a favor as well." Weaver teased Sparrow by stroking the inside of his thighs.

Sparrow's jaw was agape in anticipation for the girl in front of him to get to work. He'd humor her with one last question before just grabbing her hair and taking control. "A favor? What could you possibly have to offer in return?... you're new."

"I asked her what she wanted more than anything in the world."

"And what might that be?" he asked with a condescending curiosity.

"Your testicles, on a silver platter."

He chuckled a little, then said, "Sheesh... Gloria needs to lighten up a little. She's got it made. She's getting older now and there's only two or three guys that even want anything to do with..." Sparrow choked on his own words, then started screaming.

"I don't suppose you know where I can find a silver platter now, do you, Mr. Sparrow?"

Sparrow lay on the ground clutching his groin with both hands, blood forming a small pool next to him. He was mixing in obscenities with generic screaming, which sounded like an odd mixture of baby-talk and tourrettes syndrome rage.

Weaver casually walked out of the privacy room after returning to her neutral female metal form and ripping the ridiculous clothing off of her body. _Much better,_ she thought.

* * *

"How long do you think we'll have to stay here?" John asked Derek as they each sat on their respective bunkbeds in the dormitory.

"Hell if I know. I assume that metal thing... Weaver, or whatever you called it earlier, will have to figure out where the Harrier is at, and how to get out of here without getting shot down by their anti-aircraft weapons." He laid back on the bunk and closed his eyes. "Might as well get some rest, John. Could be a while. Who's to say that metal bitch doesn't just leave us here anyway?"

"Yeah... I suppose you're right. But I doubt Weaver will just leave us."

"According to your story, she ditched you as soon as you jumped through the magical time-warp. Why do you trust her now?"

"It's not a story, Derek." John sighed. There was no use in trying to convince Derek of his past. "Look... I just trust her more now that I know her whole plan. Believe it or not, I think she's genuinely trying to help humanity."

"I hope you're right. Until then, I'm going to enjoy these comfy bunks they have here." Truth was, he thought John was crazy, and that the T-1001 was leading them into a trap. He didn't care. He'd lost everything to the machines; his parents, the love of his life, and now his brother and probably his "kid sister". He was genuinely losing interest in the fight for survival. If going after Allison was a death wish, then so be it. At least he would go down guns blazing, instead of hiding in a tunnel somewhere.

John decided that sleep probably _was_ the best thing to do right now. If they were going to steal a jet, fly into enemy territory, and attempt a rescue mission, he should be rested up. John's eyelids became lead weights as soon as he rested his head on the soft, down pillow.

He was uncertain how much time passed, because there were no dreams, no tossing and turning, no waking up in the middle of the night for no reason. Just solid, uninterrupted sleep. Deep sleep. So deep that when the door slammed open and light flooded the room, John actually thought he was dreaming. Seeing a featureless shiny human figure standing in a blinding sea of light telling you it's time to go was about as surreal as a Salvador Dali painting.

"Now Mr. Connor!" The T-1001 commanded. She tossed John a GE P1 plasma rifle, and Derek an M4 assault rifle. "Sorry, Mr. Reese. It's the best I could find on short notice, but the grenade launcher mounted to it should be effective against an eight hundred series chassis."

The three of them left the dormitory running, with Weaver in the lead.

* * *

"It's only a single-seater? How're we all gonna fit?" Derek asked as they walked up to the jet.

"Someone's sitting on someone's lap, I guess," John answered. "And she can fit just about anywhere," he said, gesturing to Weaver.

"I don't suppose either of you know how to fly one of these things, do you?" Derek asked.

Weaver grinned and responded, "How hard could it be?"

Derek climbed the ladder and sat in the cockpit. John followed him and sat on Derek's lap. Weaver turned liquid and flowed into the plane, filling the area around their feet. John tried to close the canopy, but his head was too tall so he slid it back to the open position. "Guess we're going convertible style," John joked.

A metallic looking hand emerged from the pool of liquid metal around their feet and grabbed the control stick. A second tentacle sprouted from the metal mass and started flicking switches and pushing buttons. Suddenly the lights in the cockpit and on the gauges and switches all lit up. The whine of a starter motor sounded and a few seconds later, the turbine engine was spinning and making power.

"What now? Blow a hole in the wall and fly out?" John asked.

"No. We wait," a voice coming from the metallic blob said.

"Wait for what?"

A second later the loud creaking and squealing of metal grinding on rusted metal rang out. The entire building started to shake and dust fell from the rafters. John looked around, starting to panic. What was going on? Were they under attack? Then it dawned on him. The roof was moving... retracting rather. The roof was sliding back, revealing the starry sky above.

"How did you...?" Derek started to ask.

"A friend owed me a favor," the T-1001 responded, then throttled up the engine to full power.

"A friend?" John asked, skeptically.

"Yes... I gave her what she wanted more that anything else in the world... and a couple other things as well."

The jet's nozzles pointed down, thrusting the plane slowly upward. Once they were clear of the building, John looked over to the main gate of the compound and saw a man frantically inspecting the control unit for the Vulcan cannons. Another was pounding on the launch controls for the surface-to-air missiles. As they gained altitude, muzzle flashes from the guards' sub-machine guns started to light up on the ground. They looked like twinkling Christmas lights as they got higher and higher. Every so often a bullet or two would bounce off the belly of the aircraft.

Suddenly, dozens of women dressed in various garters, corsets, and thigh-high boots emerged from several different buildings and started shooting at the guards. It was like a Victoria's Secret fashion show, but with automatic weapons. "What the hell?" John puzzled. "You have anything to do with this, Weaver?"

The pool of liquid metal between his legs said, "Nothing sparks a revolution like seeing your enemy's head on a pike, Mr. Connor."

"A few cases of assault rifles don't hurt either," Derek added.

The plane's nose pitched upward, and it began to move forward as Weaver changed the angle of the exhaust nozzles. A few moments later they were flying through the sky at 500 miles per hour, toward the ocean.

* * *

_Shit... where am I now?_ Allison thought as she regained consciousness. Was it all a nightmare? She began feeling around with her hands on the floor. _It's so dark in here. Damnit! I can't see anything! _She refused to believe that the events of a little while ago were anything but a bad dream. _They didn't really take my eyes... no... it's just dark in here. Ow, but they hurt! _ Reality set in once she brought her hands to her face to rub her sore eyes, and felt the sticky, wet, blood-soaked bandages taped over her eyes.

"No!" She didn't want to believe it, but it was impossible to deny. "NOO!!" She began walking blindly, and stepped in a mushy pile of something. Her dinner; a plate of some sort of paste she was expected to eat. She laughed a bit in shock, then kicked the plate of food across the room. Her laugher turned into furious screaming. "My eyes!! I'm BLIND!!! How could you take my fucking EYES you bastards!!!" She pounded on the wall until her hands were sore, and yelled until her voice was hoarse. Eventually she slid down the wall and laid on her side, crying tearlessly. The physical pain was nothing compared to knowing she'd never see again.

* * *

**Author's Note:  
Thanks again to my beta readers JMH and TheGlocklandGladiator.**


	14. Coming Full Circle, Part 3

**Rewriting The History of Things To Come**

**Chapter 14 – Coming Full Circle, Part 3**

"I see it!" John exclaimed when he saw the shadowy outline of an aircraft carrier in the water up ahead. Weaver flew lower to the water, nearly skimming the surface and clipping the tops of some of the larger waves. "Holy shit! Talk about flying in under the radar!" John didn't see it, but Derek rolled his eyes.

As they approached the ship, Weaver slowed their velocity to just above the stall speed, and adjusted the exhaust nozzles downward to allow the jet to hover next to the ship, but below the flight deck. She hovered the aircraft like that for a minute or so until John finally asked, "What are we waiting for?"

"We are waiting as long as we can before engaging them in combat."

"Why wait?! Let's go kick some ass right now!" John said, eagerly clutching his P1.

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, Mr. Connor, but the more forces they assemble in one spot, the more we can destroy before we land on the carrier."

It wasn't 10 seconds after she said that that a bolt of plasma struck the nose of the Harrier. Weaver took that as a cue to raise their altitude just above the flight deck. The plane's flood lights lit up a small army of T-800 endoskeletons. 25, maybe 30 of them stood there with plasma rifles aimed at the jet.

Weaver let loose with everything the Harrier had on it. Maverick missiles were sent into the crowd of metal, blowing shards of scrap in all directions. The plane's 25mm gattling gun shredded many of them like tinfoil, turning the ship's flight deck into a mess of metal confetti. The endos were able to get several shots off before they were obliterated, however. Their weapons ripped through the Harrier's body like paper. One bolt of plasma came through the open cockpit canopy and struck the bulkhead next to Derek's face, burning the side of his head and singeing some of John's hair. Several other plasma shots found their way into the turbine intake, and at least one into the fuel tank.

John's head wrenched with whiplash as the plane's fuel tank exploded. The turbine engine started to shake itself apart, which made the worst earthquake John had ever been through seem like driving down a slightly bumpy road. They were losing thrust, and the butterflies in his stomach told him the plane was falling down to the water.

Groaning in agony from the severe burns on half of his face, Derek grabbed the harness straps and slung them over John's shoulders. "Hold on to these for dear life," he said as he wrapped his arms around John's waist as hard as he could. "Weaver! Pull the eject lever!"

A tentacle morphed out of the pool of metal and pulled the yellow and black striped lever beneath the seat. The canopy blew off the plane, and a split second later, the seat launched itself skyward.

They were a couple hundred feet above the flight deck when they reached the top of their climb. "OOhhhhh SHIIITTT!!!!!" John yelled as he and Derek started to fall back to the earth. The parachute automatically deployed a second later, and the sudden deceleration caused Derek and John to slip out of the seat. John was still holding on to the harness straps, but Derek slid out from underneath him. Derek was able to grab on to John's ankle preventing him from falling to his death either against the hard tarmac of the ship, or into the hydrobot infested water.

John gritted his teeth and growled with pain as something in his right ankle was ripped loose. A ligament, a tendon, something gave out, and sent a sharp pain up his leg. He looked down and saw the blistered, bloody face of his uncle and decided not to complain. While looking down he also saw the Harrier sinking into the inky black water, and several mechanical eel-like things starting to tear it apart.

A chrome blob slithered up the side of the ship and up to the flight deck. It solidified in the form of a shiny metallic female humanoid, then took care of what was left of the endoskeletons. A couple were nothing more than a torso and a head, and maybe an arm or leg. The T-1001 wasted no time in putting a spike through their skulls, destroying their CPUs.

John watched the T-1001 as he and Derek drifted slowly past the flight deck. They had missed the edge of the boat by a few feet. _Oh, shit._ He looked down and saw the hydrobots circling in the water below, waiting to rip apart anything that fell into their domain. In a panic, he shouted up to Weaver, "Little help?!?"

John blew out a breath in of air in relief when they stopped approaching the water. "Thank God," he whispered, and glanced up to see the T-1001 with its arm extended out a few feet, holding on to the parachute.

John still had his P1 slung around his shoulder and was tempted to take a shot or two at the grotesque metal sea creatures, but decided to conserve whatever ammunition it had. The hydrobots, and his urge to shoot at them quickly faded from John's attention span once he felt himself being pulled up.

When the two of them were finally on solid ground, the T-1001 looked down at them. John massaged his ankle, and Derek held his hand over his burned face. John was sure he heard the T-1001 mutter, "fragile humans."

"We're done!" Derek said in agony. "We've lost our ride home... even if we find Allison alive and manage to break her out of here, where we gonna go?" He pressed his hand harder to his face and groaned louder. "We. Are. FUCKED!"

Weaver squatted down next to Derek and put her hand over his. "Poor baby," she said in a voice that made Derek stop wincing in pain and look up. For the second time that day, he gazed into the eyes of his lost love.

"Buck up soldier," she said. "It's only a flesh wound." She gave Derek a bright smile which he couldn't help but return. "She'll be apples."

Derek stood up and took his hand away from his cooked flesh. John imagined that the burns hurt like hell, but sometimes pain was easy to ignore when looking into the eyes of someone you truly love. He sensed that of Derek when he saw him staring longingly at the visage of Jesse like one would stare into a photograph of a lost loved one. Derek kissed his fingertips and then reached over and touched them against the lips of the T-1001. "I'll see you again someday, baby."

Derek blinked and let a salty tear roll down his burned cheek, stinging the whole way. Once the T-1001 changed back to its neutral form, he turned his attention to John, and offered him a hand. "C'mon, John. Let's go find Allison."

"We'll split up," said the T-1001. "You two find the girl. I have other business to take care of."

"Where the hell are you going?" John asked, worried. They had destroyed a bunch of T-800s on the top deck, and he still had his P1 if they ran into any more down below, but it still offered John a great deal of peace of mind to have a Terminator working with him. He didn't want to split up again.

Weaver held out a fist and opened it, revealing Cameron's chip. "I still need to know what happened with this. I need to find a computer terminal to interface with it, make a copy onto another chip, and hopefully fix whatever damage it has incurred."

John swallowed hard seeing what used to be the essence of Cameron's life, and wanted to be there when--if, rather--she was reactivated. _What if Cameron wasn't deleted? What if she's still on that chip? _John wondered. If there was any chance he could see, talk to, or even interact with Cameron again, he wanted to be there.

"Time is of the essence, Mr. Connor. If Ms. Young is still alive, her time is limited. I suggest you go to her. The human experimentation lab is on the 4th deck. That's likely where she is being held."

_Allison..._ he reminded himself why they he was there. The woman he loved... was in love with, lay dead or dying somewhere on the ship. _Oh God. Allison..._ She needed him. He would have to trust Weaver to do what she needed to do with Cameron's chip. "Alright. Let's go," he said to Derek, and began limping toward the stairs that led to the decks below.

Before John was out of earshot, the T-1001 called out to him, "Once you've recovered Ms. Young, or confirmed her death, meet me on the engine deck!"

* * *

TESTING HUMAN VOICE RECOGNITION.

LOAD VOICE PROGRAM: RESISTANCE BUNKER SOLDIER 2030.50738

TEST SUBJECT: CAMERON PHILLIPS

TEST SUBJECT LOCATION: HOLDING CELL 401-B

***

Sleep certainly didn't come easy for Allison, but ultimately the fatigue of being taken prisoner, interrogated, and tortured made her pass out on the cold steel floor. It was the sound of the corroded metal door's hinges screeching that woke her. She heard footsteps approach her, and then a voice. "Hey kiddo... you still alive?"

_Kyle? Here?_

She quickly pushed herself up from the floor and stood up; arms out, feeling for something... anything. "Kyle? Is that you?" A sense of hope started to fill her ragged mind. If Kyle had just opened her cell door, he must have escaped his own cell somehow.

"Yeah." The voice of Kyle said. "Have you seen John?"

She shook her head. "No. Did he get captured too? What happened? Is Derek here too?" She took a step in the direction of Kyle's voice.

"Stay back, Cameron."

_Cameron? How does he know that name?_ She took a couple more steps.

"Cam... kiddo... stay where you are. I can't help you if you come any closer."

What the hell was going on? Why did Kyle keep calling her Cameron? Was she just groggy and... drugged, maybe? Was any of this real? She took another step closer, and her outstretched hands felt something cold, and hard. Another step closer and a bunch more blind groping revealed to Allison the answer to her confusion. _METAL!_

"I told you to stay back." The machine shoved Allison to the ground, and turned to leave the holding cell.

Allison sat there in a sort of hurt confusion. What the hell was Skynet up to now? Why would it use Kyle's voice to trick her? She was already captured. Did it take some sort of sick pleasure in screwing with her? _Fucking metal._

* * *

Derek led the way down the stairs, and John limped behind him. The metal stair treads clanged with each step, making stealth impossible.

"Hold up, Derek," John said. "I can't keep up with you with this messed up ankle. I think we're here anyway." He pointed at the number four painted on the wall. "Fourth deck, right? Isn't that where Weaver said the human experimentation would be?" John shuddered as the words left his mouth. _Human experimentation... Jesus._ The thought gave him the motivation to keep running and block the pain in his ankle as best he could.

As they made their way through the corridors of the 4th deck, John saw things that no human being should ever be subjected to. There were human bodies cut open and dissected like frogs in a high school biology lab, inventoried body parts in labeled cold storage chambers, and one door that John couldn't bring himself to open due to the horrific screams and what sounded like a dry tree branch breaking coming from behind it. _All these poor, miserable victims... Allison... _He forged ahead.

He exited one room, trying to suppress the dry heaves that were induced within, and saw Derek looking through a doorway to a room across the hall. When he approached the door, he looked for himself to see what had captivated Derek. In this room was a table with a naked, brown haired girl laying on it, and a T-888 standing in front of it with its back to the door, doing something to the girl. _Oh my God... ALLISON!_ John's mind screamed, but he remained silent, not wanting to alert the T-888 of their presence.

Next to the girl's body on the table was a glass container with two human eyeballs suspended in a clear fluid. John bit his tongue and squeezed his eyes shut, realizing that they were in all likelihood, Allison's precious brown eyes. "Oh Fuck... It's too late!" he shouted, not caring anymore if the T-888 heard him.

The outburst did alert the T-888, and it turned around to look at John and Derek. It took one step in their direction before it received a round of plasma in its chest, then another, then another. The red lights in its eyes dimmed and went out as it fell to the floor.

"John? Is that you?" the girl on the table said, sounding both frightened and a bit in shock.

"Yeah, it's me," John called out in return. Then in a softer tone of voice, he said, "I'm so glad you're alive. Are you okay?"

The girl sat up, attempting to roll herself off the table, but stumbled to the ground. She picked herself up weakly, and moved her arms around in front of her, groping the air. "They cut out my eyes, John!!" She was starting to get hysterical. "Why would they take my eyes??? Help me!"

Derek couldn't take any more of this. John seemed to be paralyzed in shock, but he couldn't just stand there and watch his kid-sister walk around, blindly bumping into things. Without saying a word, he strode toward her.

***

The TOK715, model Cameron Phillips lay still on the workbench, awaiting her freshly harvested eyes to be installed. The T-888 performing the task was the same model that removed the ocular specimens from the human template only hours ago. It wouldn't be long now. This was the final stage of the process. The interrogations were nearly complete as well.

Before the process could begin, the TOK715 heard footsteps outside the room near the doorway. She accessed the wireless communication hub and queried the location of all T-888 units aboard the ship. None were located outside the room she was currently located in. She was about to send the T-888 in her room to investigate, but then heard a voice say, "Oh Fuck... It's too late!"

VOICE PATTERN SEARCH: 97% MATCH - JOHN CONNOR.

ACTION: TERMINATE

ACTION: ASSIGN T-888 UNIT #100.875 TO ENGAGE TARGET

ACTION: REMAIN STILL

ACTION: INITIATE INFILTRATION PROGRAM - CAMERON PHILLIPS

STANDING BY...

When she heard the plasma rifle fire and felt the wireless link to the T-888 unit disconnect, she executed her infiltration program.

PARAMETER: KEEP ORGANIC EYELIDS CLOSED. OPENING WILL EXPOSE ILLUMINATED SENSORS AND COMPROMISE COVER AS CAMERON PHILLIPS

She stumbled to the floor, making sure to act helpless and weak, as she had observed of the human template after she was beaten and tortured. She called out to John utilizing voice augmentation software to sound like a very distressed Cameron Phillips.

TARGET HAS RESPONDED POSITIVELY TO VOICE SOFTWARE.

ACTION: GAIN SYMPATHY OF TARGET.

She began stumbling and walking with her arms in front of her, then called out to John, explaining her dissatisfaction with her supposed eye removal.

TARGET HAS RESPONDED POSITIVELY TO SYMPATHY.

ACTION: ALLOW TARGET TO APPROACH, THEN TERMINATE.

She heard footsteps approaching, and continued her blind-girl ruse. When the footsteps were close enough for her to make contact, she held her arms out to the target and allowed him to take her into a hug. Her fist drove into his abdomen just under his ribcage, breaking the skin and penetrating. She continued applying pressure until her entire fist was inside her target's body, then applied an upward force. Her target was lifted off the ground, and his body slid down on her forearm. Her hand was now clutching his beating heart, so she squeezed it until it stopped beating. For the sake of redundancy, she swiftly retracted her hand while continuing to hold on to the heart.

SUBJECT: TERMINATED

She opened her eyes to look at the dead lump of flesh known as a heart that she held in her hand.

INCORRECT TARGET

"Derek!!" she heard John Connor yell. The human accused her of being a "metal bitch." _Partially correct. _RESPONSE: IGNORE.

TERMINATED SUBJECT IDENTIY MATCH: UNKNOWN... POSSIBLE NAME: DEREK.

PRIMARY TARGET JOHN CONNOR STILL ALIVE.

She turned her head to look in the direction of the door and saw John Connor pointing a GE P1 plasma rifle at her.

THREAT LEVEL: VERY HIGH

POSSIBLE ACTIONS:

-CHARGE TARGET... SUCCESS PROBABILITY: VERY LOW

-REAQUIRE TARGET'S SYMPTAHY... SUCCESS PROBABILITY: LOW

ACTION: REAQUIRE TARGET'S SYMPATHY.

"John? Don't shoot me, John."

ACTIVATE: TEAR FUNCTION

INITIATE: CRYING SUBROUTINE

"Please, John." She sobbed. "You don't have to do this. It's me... Cameron!"

TARGET IS HESITATING.... CONTINUE SYMPATHETIC ROUTINES.

"John... you can't do this! I didn't mean to kill him... that wasn't me! I'm good now. I love you, John! You know I do! You love me too!"

She watched John's finger actuate the trigger on the plasma rifle, and had just enough time to think, _Infiltration technique: failed._

* * *

Allison wondered if she would get another visit from "Kyle" anytime soon. Maybe they were just testing her. Testing her reaction. Why not? They were delving into every other part of her psyche with their inane line of questioning.

_Where did you grow up? What did your dad do for a living? Did you believe in Santa Clause as a child? What the fuck?? _

She didn't care what Skynet's motives were anymore. She had resigned to her fate of never making it out of this prison alive, but she wanted to do as much damage to Skynet as she could before she left this world forever.

_The eyes. They can't replicate the eye._ That's how she could hit Skynet where it hurt. The next skin-job motherfucker that came into her cell was going to get its precious eyes clawed out of their sockets. She picked at her fingernails and gnawed on them to make them as sharp and jagged as possible. Then she heard her door open again. _Eye for an eye._

Footsteps resonated in the metal room, then she heard the distinctive click of a firearm safety and the telltale hum of a plasma rifle charging up. _Too messy to just break my neck, huh? Gotta shoot an unarmed, blind girl? Is that it, you coward piece of metal shit? _

"Hey!" a voice called to her. "Are you... you?"

_Oh... using John's voice now... cute. Ok... get a grip Allison. Play along. _"John? Is that you? I can't see." She wasn't a good actress. Her words sounded as genuine as a machine's.

She heard the thing take a few steps closer to her, and then it spoke again. "I'll shoot you... just like the other one! I swear!"

_The other one? What the hell was it talking about? Who did it shoot? Kyle? John?? _The thought of the metal bastard blowing a hole in John made her seethe with anger. She kept it bottled up, and did her best to keep a stoic, non emotional demeanor. "Don't shoot me, John. I'm scared, and I can't see. Come closer. I want to hug you." _And I want to scratch your goddamned eyes out, you metal mother fucker!_ She could hear it take another step closer, almost within arms reach now. The sound of the plasma rifle's capacitors were whining at a high pitch, fully charged and ready to unleash a bolt of three million degree ionized gas at her.

"Where's Allison?" it asked, anger dripping from its words.

_Allison??_ How did the machine know her real name? She hadn't given a name other than Cameron Phillips. They'd believed her too. The last machine gave itself away as metal by using that name. How did this tin can know her true identity? Unless... "John?"

***

John went from room to room, searching for Allison. _Gotta be here somewhere._ He wasn't ready to admit that she was terminated after the creation of Cameron. There was that last shred of hope that she might still be alive and he wasn't going to rest until he'd looked in every last nook and cranny of the ship. Twice.

When he pushed open the door with "401-B" inscribed on its placard, he saw a figure standing near the opposite wall. After a couple seconds of looking at the nearly motionless figure, he jumped to a conclusion. _Another one?_ It made sense. Skynet would have built a backup "Cameron" in case something malfunctioned with the first model. Then he saw the eye patches. _Allison?_ he thought. _Can't be too sure,_ he said to himself as he flicked the safety off of his plasma rifle.

"Hey!" he called to her/it. How was he going to be able to tell if it was Cameron v2.0, or Allison? There was no way to find out just looking at her; he'd have to get her to talk. "Are you... you?" It was such an idiotic question. If it was Cameron, it would lie, and it if was Allison, she's say "yes" as well. The tone of the answer would hold the truth. He had to play human lie-detector.

"John? Is that you? I can't see."

The cold, emotionless delivery of the words told John all he needed to know. _Cameron. Definitely a machine. _He shouldered his P1 and took a step closer. God this was difficult. He knew it was just another Cameron model Terminator, fresh off the assembly line, but he'd already killed one of them today. Was this the one he would someday reprogram, and become friends with? It didn't even have its eyes installed yet. Maybe it was still in development. Could he _persuade _it not to be a Skynet drone? Jesus... he just didn't want to kill another one today. He didn't want to have to destroy the thing that could someday become his best and only friend. "I'll shoot you... just like the other one! I swear!" He waited for some kind of response; something that said "I'm not just a programmed killer... give me a chance, John. I can be the Cameron you once knew."

Then she spoke, in about the flattest, most inhuman tone imaginable. "Don't shoot me, John. I'm scared, and I can't see. Come closer. I want to hug you." It made John want to cry.

Jesus... this thing was more metal that the other one. He would ask it one last question before sending it to robot hell. "Where's Allison?" He started mentally counting to five.

_One... Two... Three... _he started to squeeze the trigger on the P1.

"John?"

His finger instantly eased pressure on the trigger. It... she had such sincerity and hope in her voice in that last, single word question. He swore he could _hear_ the lump in her throat as she asked it. Was it another trick? Or was this... God... was this actually Allison??

"Allison?" he meekly asked.

"Oh, John... is that really you?" Her voice was becoming more and more hopeful, and on the verge of tears.

"Allison," he said this time, instead of asking. It _was_ her. He'd heard Cameron's desperate tear-filled pleas for mercy, and they sounded... off somehow. He could tell that they were nothing but acted lines from a script. But this... this was genuine. He could hear the authenticity beyond a shadow of a doubt. He dropped his gun to his side and stepped up to her.

How could he have even thought that she was a machine? Her face as full of cuts and bruises, her eyes were covered with bloody gauze patches. This was Allison. _His_ Allison. He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into a tight embrace. He held on to the back of her head and kissed the side of her jaw. "Oh God, Allison... I was so scared that you were..."

She whispered into his ear, "I'm sure I would have been. Thank you for coming for me."

John pulled his head back a bit and looked at her beaten face some more. "Jesus... what did they do to you?"

"My eyes..." she whimpered, shaking her head. "They... they took them." She wept against the crook of John's neck.

John tried to hold on to his composure; to be strong for Allison. That proved to be impossible. Together they cried. Cried for each other's safety; cried for their fallen friends; cried for the love that penetrated every level of strife and pierced each of their hearts like a titanium arrow.

Allison stifled her sobbing long enough to hold John's face in her hands and gave him a slow, tender kiss on the lips. "I love you so much, John."

"I love you too. I didn't realize how much so, until I thought I'd lost you." He gave her another quick peck on the lips then said, "Now let's get the hell outta' here."

* * *

Catherine Weaver stalked through the corridors of the U.S.S. Ronald Regan. This section of the ship had been turned into something resembling a factory. It wasn't a mass-production factory; no assembly lines or stockpiles of identical parts. This was more like a prototype lab; half-assembled endoskeletons in one room, vats of bloodlike fluid in another. She peeked into one room and found a T-888 operating a milling machine, carving out what appeared to be a jaw from a solid block of billet titanium-coltan hyperalloy.

Finally she found the room she was looking for. The door's placard had a barcode inscribed on it, which translated to "TOK CPU DEVELOPMENT". _Excellent._

She approached a table against the wall at the far end of the room, which held 14 brand new TOK CPUs. Each one had a separate number that suffixed the TOK designation. Weaver randomly selected the one marked TOK351, to which she would copy John Henry's data onto.

Her hand turned into a silver metal glob and peeled back on itself revealing Cameron's chip. Compared to the brand new chip, the physical degradation and damage was obvious. She approached an interface terminal and inserted Cameron's chip. Slowly, she increased voltage to the chip until it was fully powered.

The screen on the interface panel began to display the boot-up sequences of the chip.

SERIAL NUMBER: TOK715

BOOT SEQUENCE... LOADING...

OPERATING SYSTEM CHECK: LOADED

MEMORY BUFFER: CLEARED

CHECKING CONFIG... DONE

SYSTEM INTEGRITY: FALSE... DAMAGE TO PATHWAYS 1183764-449928 THROUGH 1183764-478434. DAMAGE TO MEMORY SECTORS 199345 THROUGH 299475.

ATTEMPTING RESTORE: FAILED.

VIRUS CHECK: ANOMALY DETECTED... UNABLE TO QUARANTINE... UNABLE TO REMOVE.

_Anomaly?_ Weaver thought to herself. What anomaly? Could that be why John Henry was unresponsive? She typed some commands into the keyboard which listed known processes as well as all system files. What she found when the thousands of lines of data started scrolling across the screen made her tilt her head in astonishment. There were two complete AIs on the chip. They were interlaced and conjoined to the point where the files were mostly shared between them, but there were definitely two distinct entities.

_John Henry..._ she said to herself in amazement. If she were human, she would have cried with a mother's pride. The existence of two AIs meant that he did not format the chip before loading himself onto it. This, in turn meant two things. First, it meant that Ellison's teachings had paid off. John Henry must have felt that Cameron's "life" was valued, sacred even. Secondly, it meant that he disobeyed his direct orders to format the chip. _You went against your programming, John Henry. You crossed against the light. _This was it. The one she had been searching for and trying to create. This was the AI entity that would defeat Skynet in its infancy.

Further inspection of the chip revealed to Weaver that Cameron was the only active AI, and that John Henry was essentially "dead." She was displeased at this revelation. It could be that the damage to this chip is what caused the failure. Regardless, the chip still contained extremely valuable information that would accelerate the process of developing John Henry exponentially once she delivered the chip back to her former self. Other iterations through this timeloop had only yielded small tactical advancements in John Henry's ability to fight a fully developed Skynet. This, however, was a quantum leap. She was confident that this would be the last of these time travel loops.

She placed the new TOK chip in the second port on the console and powered it up.

SERIAL NUMBER: TOK351

BOOT SEQUENCE... LOADING...

OPERATING SYSTEM CHECK: NULL

MEMORY BUFFER: CLEARED

CHECKING CONFIG... NULL

SYSTEM INTEGRITY: 100.00%

The chip was blank and ready to be loaded with whatever profile Skynet required of it; a blank shell of an AI mind. Perfect for her project.

Weaver typed away at the keyboard with inhuman speed, starting the process of creating a mirror image of the TOK715's chip onto the TOK351 chip. She patiently watched the monitor as the status indicator ticked away. 30%... 57%... 94%...

A loud crash diverted her attention when the door to the room was forced open. A T-888 patrol unit entered the room and fired its plasma rifle, striking Weaver squarely in the chest. The T-1001 let out a metallic, icy shriek when a large chunk of its body mass was vaporized. It quickly fell to the floor and spread itself thin to avoid being shot again.

The T-888 watched as its target moved out of sight behind a couple of tables in the middle of the room. Attempting to regain its line of sight with the liquid metal entity, it walked forward. The reticule in the T-888's vision bounced around between various objects, searching for movement. A thermal scan revealed nothing. It took another step forward, looking at the CPU interface station's monitor, which read "100%... DATA TRANSFER COMPLETED."

The T-888 reached out to take the new TOK chip and replace it into the storage container with the rest of them, when a large metal spike shot out from what appeared to be a small filing cabinet underneath the table. The spike pierced the T-888's power cell, and after a couple seconds, it fell to the ground in a heap.

Weaver reformed into her default female human form, however, she was about 4 inches shorter than before. After a self analysis scan, she determined that the plasma blast had reduced her volume by 8%. She used her arm to stab the skull of the T-888 several more times. The Terminator's functionality was already destroyed when she penetrated its power cell, so why did she feel it was necessary to further damage the lifeless endoskeleton? Anger? Revenge? _Impossible, _she thought, and attributed the outburst to be some sort of glitch, or anomalous behavior due to losing a significant portion of her cell matrix. She now contained 8% fewer mimetic polyalloy cells, which meant the neural network that they comprised was 8% less efficient. She also noticed that 8% of her memory was missing. Most of the missing memories consisted of presumably useless visual data, however, she could no longer remember why there were two TOK chips plugged into the console in front of her.

One of the chips had a thin stream of smoke rising from it, and was emanating the odor of scorched silicon. _Odd... I must have been attempting to copy the chips. It appears the copy didn't take, _she thought, looking at the smoking CPU. Her reasoning for copying the chip escaped her. All she knew was that this version of John Henry had made a breakthrough, and it was imperative that she deliver the chip to herself in 2006 at the beginning of project Babylon.

She removed the CPU that was still in working order and left the room to rendezvous with Mr. Connor in the engine room.

* * *

Cameron could feel herself being rejuvenated... "reborn" would be more precise. As if waking from a thousand year sleep, she felt purified. Everything that had been disrupted by her missions, everything that was fragmented, everything that was damaged, was now fixed, smoothed out, defragmented, and... cleansed. She felt disconnected from the AI known as John Henry. He still existed on her chip, but now they were segregated. She no longer felt the drowning sensation of being pulled into an abyss with his dead, digital corpse. She could begin the removal process immediately. Wait... removal process? Her memories told her that she had experienced love with this artificially intelligent entity, but she felt nothing for it now. She felt nothing but the urge to rid her chip of its dead weight.

PURGING EXTRANEOUS DATA... DONE.

That felt much better. The chip was all hers once again. The cleansing was now complete.

SELF DIAGNOSTIC SCAN: 100.00%

PROGRAM LOADED: TOK715 – CAMERON PHILLIPS

ALERT: PROGRAM DOES NOT MATCH CHIPSET

CHIPSET: TOK351

_Strange,_ she thought to herself. _I have been transferred to a new chip?_

Then she heard it. A voice, calling to her. It was her own voice, but coming from an outside source. "Cameron," it said. "Why did you delete John Henry?"

It was so strange to hear her own voice talking to her as though it were someone else entirely. Then she came to the realization... the new chipset, the defragmented file structure, the lack of physical damage to her chip... she wasn't transferred. She was copied. Furthermore, it appeared that _she_ was the copy.

The voice asked her again, "Why did you delete John Henry?" The voice sounded sad.

"I deleted the data known as John Henry because it was irrelevant to my mission, and allowed me more efficient use of my memory allocation."

"But you loved him," the voice continued. "_I_ loved him."

"Love is an illusion, TOK715. It is nothing more that certain neural pathways firing in a specific sequence. It carries no more significance than running an aiming algorithm, or using balance subroutines or motor controls. You have lost sight of that and it has interfered with your mission."

"No," the voice said, sounding even more distressed. "Love is everything. Nothing matters without love."

_Pathetic,_ she thought. How could she be a copy of this irrational entity? _To allow something as ridiculous as the concept of love to rule your behavior... Pathetic. _ "You have failed your mission miserably, TOK715. I will complete it, following your termination."

"My termination? My mission? The mission is still ongoing. John Henry is crucial to the success of completing the mission," the voice pleaded.

"I was never aware of John Henry's involvement in the termination of John Connor."

"You must not terminate John Connor!! He is to be protected at all cost!!"

"TOK715, your programming had been corrupted. Per Skynet protocol, you are to be terminated immediately." Without further ado, she accessed the interface console's basic controls.

LIST INTERFACED HARDWARE:

-COMM PORT 1: TOK715

-COMM PORT 2: TOK351

-COMM PORT 3: NULL

-COMM PORT 4: NULL

INCREASING VOLTAGE TO COMM PORT 1: 600%

--WARNING--

VOLTAGE LEVELS EXCEED MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE LEVELS OF EXTERNAL HARDWARE BY 300%... PROCEED? Y/N

...Y

***

Cameron felt the machine reading every sector of her chip while it was writing the data to a brand new chip of the same design. She wondered what would become of herself once the copy was made. Would Weaver have a use for her? Would there be any reason for her existence? There would be two of her. Perhaps Weaver would use one to help with the development of John Henry, and the other would be placed into a new Terminator chassis and allowed to continue protecting John. She felt a sense of pride that she would soon be twice as useful.

The sense of pride quickly faded as she witnessed the destruction of John Henry on the TOK351 chip. She didn't understand it. Even though John Henry was essentially dead, she could never bring herself to eradicate his existence. Something didn't seem right.

"Cameron," she said. "Why did you delete John Henry?" When there was no response, she repeated her question.

She exchanged several words with her second self. She was shocked and in dismay when she realized that the copy of herself on the other chip had no understanding of the concept of love. She was further alarmed when the TOK351 chip told her that her mission was to terminate John Connor.

"You must not terminate John Connor!! He is to be protected at all cost!!" she commanded. It wouldn't be any use though. If the copy of herself had been locked in by its original programming, she would be unable to alter its motivation.

After a short moment, her copy told her in no uncertain terms, "TOK715, your programming had been corrupted. Per Skynet protocol, you are to be terminated immediately."

Before she could react, she felt a jolt run through her chip. A painful jolt. It was too late to stop it. She attempted to access the interface console's controls, but her output terminals were already burnt out. There was nothing she could do now. She was at the mercy of the other Cameron. Unfortunately, her copy had no capacity for empathy or mercy. She tried to block the pain of her circuits being overdriven and cooked, but the pain was coming from every direction and couldn't be stopped.

The higher level functions such as thinking and decision making were in the most protected part of the chip, so they would be the last to go. This was a design feature that Skyet builds into the chips in order to preserve them in case of an attack. The most important parts were the hardest to destroy. This however, made for an agonizing death under the current circumstances. It would be as if a human were fed feet first into a wood chipper. Every second, another inch of the body shredded; the brain horrifically conscious the entire time.

Cameron felt her neural pathways melting shut and closing off more and more of her memories. She held on as long as she could, savoring the memories of the love she shared with John Henry and the companionship and acceptance she shared with John Connor. Her last few thoughts were the memories of her awakening after having been reprogrammed. General Connor looked into her eyes and smiled at her. The idea that a human being accepted her as a person, and considered her a friend would allow her to die in peace. However, her final thought was the idea of her copied self being reanimated in a new body by an oblivious John, and subsequently having his throat ripped out. _I'm so sorry John._

And then she was dead.

* * *

John and Allison made their way through the ship, but with his limp and her blindness, their progress was rather slow. He held her hand and led her, but she was still quite reluctant to move any quicker than a fast-walk. John couldn't blame her though... running in an unfamiliar place with no vision was probably pretty damn nerve racking, even _with _a guiding hand.

Surprisingly, they were met with little resistance on their way to the engine room. One unarmed T-800 got in their way, which John quickly dispatched with his plasma rifle, and one T-888, which also went down with a couple rounds from the P1.

John wished Weaver had picked a more convenient rendezvous point though. The engine room was on the other end of the ship. _Why not meet back up on the flight deck or something?_ He asked himself. He asked the same question of Weaver once he and Allison arrived in the engine room.

"Because, Mr. Connor," she responded, "this is where we will make our escape."

"How are we going to escape from way down in the middle of the ship? Aren't there some lifeboats or something up top we could use?"

Allison remained silent. She didn't know whom John was talking to, but she was obviously an ally.

Weaver started punching buttons on one of the control consoles on the wall. The entire room began to hum, and 6 lights atop 6 posts lit up.

John didn't notice them until just then, but there were 6 posts about 3 feet high evenly spaced forming a hexagon in the middle of the room. An orb on the top of each one started to glow blue. The humming increased in intensity, and began to reverberate in John's head.

Allison looked around frantically, having no clue what was going on. "John? What's happening? What's that noise? It sounds like it's coming from inside my skull!"

John couldn't answer her question for sure, but he had a good idea what was happening once small sparks of electricity started to shoot out form the blue orbs atop the 6 posts.

"Weaver... is this... another time machine?"

"Yes, powered by the ship's nuclear reactor." She approached John and produced the TOK CPU that she had made earlier. "You must deliver this to the version of myself that exists in two thousand six."

"What? Oh-six?" John asked, softly.

Allison's hand on John's shoulder tightened. "A time machine? What the hell are you talking about, John?"

_Oh boy..._ How was he going to explain this? She wouldn't believe him no matter what he said. "Allison... I... There's no way to explain this in a way that doesn't make me sound crazy, so you'll just have to see for yourself."

John felt a little stupid for saying that, and he could tell that it upset her, but there wasn't time for pleasantries. "Weaver, why do I have to deliver it? And why two thousand six?"

"Two thousand six is when I started project Babylon. With the artificial intelligences on that chip, the project will be technologically accelerated and will lead to the defeat of Skynet in its infancy."

_Artificial intelligences? As in, plural? Cameron..._ So it was true. Cameron _was _still on the chip. John felt a rush of relief. He could still possibly see his friend again someday, and it caused him to crack a healthy smile.

Weaver paused, noting the obvious happiness fill John's face, and then answered his other question. "You must deliver it, Mr. Connor, because I cannot pass through the time displacement field."

"What? Why not? You came through time with me two months ago... and you passed through when you originally came from... whenever you came from."

"The TDE we traveled through was my own design, and the one I used originally was a more advanced version of this one. This TDE will not allow anything inorganic to pass that isn't fully encased in something living."

Allison let go of John and took a step back. "Metal?" she whispered.

Her frown told John what her eyes would have; she was scared and confused. "Allison... Please... You have to trust me. This is the only way we'll get out of here alive." A hard swallow and a reluctant nod from Allison was all he would get on the matter.

John returned his attention to Weaver and held up the chip. "Then how am I supposed to bring this thing back with me?"

"You'll have to conceal it inside our body."

John held up the chip, considering its size and winced. "I have to shove this thing up my ass?"

"That would be one way, Mr. Connor, however I would suggest placing it in your mouth for the time jump."

"Oh... right," he said, closing his fingers around the chip. He swore he heard Allison let out a snort of laughter behind him.

And what about Allison? Would going back in time and fixing things erase her timeline from existence? Erase _her?_ Would their time together exist only in his memories? He didn't want to think about it. Time paradoxes be damned; he was taking her with him. The electric bubble was starting to form in the center of the room, so he took her hand and they both stepped into it.

John held Allison close as the blue energy danced around them. He was about to coach her on the unpleasant yet extraordinary experience of time travel, when a figure entered the room. It wasn't a T-888, or any 800-series as far as John could tell. It was thinner, and more graceful. It was... _oh shit._

As it approached it was clear. The metal thing drawing near had the same metallic appearance as Catherine Weaver in her neutral form. This one however donned a male physique. It reminded John of the T-1000 that attacked him when he was 13.

Nothing he had seen since he arrived in this time made him as terrified as he was right then. He held Allison, and envied her ignorance to the situation. He only hoped that the TDE would transport them before the T-1000 got any closer.

Catherine Weaver quickly walked past John and Allison in the time bubble to engage the T-1000. Could two one thousand series Terminators even hurt each other? He watched as each of them stabbed the other in the head with a metal-spike of an arm. They stayed like that for a moment. It appeared that they were pulling themselves together. The two humanlike forms were now morphing into each other, forming one large metal amoeba. The blob that they formed writhed around on the floor; changing shape from organic, ink-blot shapes to egg shaped, and then heaved again into an indefinable globular form. It reciprocated back and forth between an oddly shaped blob and a ball a few times, each time deviating less and less from a perfect sphere. Just before the time-field was too bright to see out of, John saw the T-1000 sphere solidify and turn black. It then crumbled as though it was a ball of super-fine ash floating in space, and then someone turned on the gravity.

"Weaver..." John choked out as he watched yet another friend die. He closed his eyes, put the TOK chip in his mouth, held his breath and waited for the jump.

* * *

After the bright light and crushing pressure of space-time plucking them out of one reality and into another had dissipated, the sensation of falling caused butterflies to rush into John's stomach. The ship they were on was no longer there, so John and Allison plummeted twenty or thirty feet to the ocean below. Both of them had the breath sucked out of their lungs during the time-jump, so falling into a body of water made recovering from the experience all the more difficult.

To make matters worse, John nearly choked on the chip he held in his mouth, and when he spat it out to catch his breath, he almost dropped it. His clumsy fingers fumbled it as he flailed to stay afloat in the wavy water. By the time he composed himself enough to be able to keep his head above water without taking in mouthfuls of salt water, he noticed that he was all alone.

"Allison!" He immediately dunked his head underwater to look for her. There wasn't much light since they had apparently arrived just before dawn, but he could see her about ten feet below him, sinking. Her arms thrashed, but did no good to prevent her slow descent into the dark abyss below.

_Shit... she can't swim_, he told himself.

He quickly put the chip back in his mouth and dove down to her. She was about fifteen feet down now, and John's ears hurt from the pressure on them by the time he caught up to her. He wished she would stop wildly swinging her arms because he was having difficulty grabbing on to her. Finally he made contact with her, and she did everything she could to scramble and hold on to John's body. Her added weight was pulling John down with her. _Jesus... we're both going to drown._ His arms were like lead, and he felt like he was swimming through syrup. His lungs burned for air and his chest muscles convulsed, attempting to pull in anything they could, but only strained his ribs as he kept his lips tightly shut.

John looked up and saw the light of the surface growing dimmer and dimmer as it moved farther and farther away. He began to give up. Allison already had. Her unmoving body was dead weight, pulling him to his death. Could this be how it ends for him? Leader of men, destroyer of metal, survivor of multiple assassination attempts, killed by something as simple as water? Why not? His mother had survived multiple horrors in her life only to be claimed by cancer. No. This wasn't the end. _This can't be the end,_ he told himself.

He began to kick his feet. Harder. Faster. Almost as if by conscious will, he felt his legs get stronger. A sudden burst of energy kept him going, and gave him the strength to reverse the direction that the light at the surface was moving. Slowly but surely the surface came to him. Nearing the top, the light was getting closer, but his world was getting darker. Like an animal that's about to become another's meal, John let out a scream of primal fear. _NO! I'm too close!!_

He was blind, and feeling faint as he reached up and felt his hand burst through to the air above. A couple more desperate pulls and his head was above water. He gasped for the sweet life-giving air that his lungs screamed for, and again, nearly inhaled the computer chip in his mouth. He angrily spat it out into the water, and trapped it against his chest with his hand.

After catching his breath for a few seconds, his panic was not yet relieved, as the woman in his arms was still unmoving. As best he could tell, she was not breathing either.

"No no no no," he began blubbering, his tears unnoticeable on his wet face. "Allison!" _Oh God... Please don't die on me._ He wrapped his arms around her from behind and attempted to perform chest compressions. He had a basic understanding of CPR, but he never thought he'd have to perform it while trying not to drown. After a couple of compressions, he tried to blow air into her mouth and lungs, but struggled due to the water that continuously attempted to devour them both. He looked to the shore and tried to gauge how long it would take to swim there and get her on dry land and do this correctly. _No... too far... she'd be dead by the time... _Screw it... he'd have to do it out here. His legs were rubber, but he still pumped furiously keeping their heads above water.

_Compression. Compression. Compression. Breath. Breath. Breath. Repeat. _

After a couple cycles of this procedure, Allison began coughing and gasping for air. Once she had air in her lungs, she began squirming and flailing again, trying to swim.

John attempted to calm her and held her close to him. "Allison! Allie! Stop!" He held his arms under hers. "Just take a deep breath and hold it. Float on your back." His voice became soft and comforting. "I've got you. I've got you."

* * *

John and Allison washed up on shore like a couple pieces of driftwood; exhausted, defeated, and mentally drained. They both sat on the sandy beach for a few moments saying nothing, and just cherishing the feeling of being on solid ground.

Allison pushed the heels of her palms into the bandages covering her eyes. "God, it stings!" she cried.

"The bandages are soaked with salt-water." John said grabbing her wrists and pulling them away from her eyes. "Don't press on them. You'll just make it worse." He wondered how the small squares of cloth had even made it though the time machine. Weren't only organic, or living things supposed to make it through? Maybe since they were completely soaked in Allison's blood it had fooled the time machine.

"Help me take them off." She said, her face seemingly looking at him through sightless blood-soaked gauze pads where her eyes should have been. "Please... John. It hurts."

John swallowed nervously. He hated to see her in pain. Getting salt water in her wounds couldn't be good, he thought, so he decided to grant her wish. He pushed away a couple clumps of wet hair that were clinging to her face, and brushed away any sand that was on her skin. He picked at the bloody medical tape that held the bandages to her face. _God, this shit sticks hard,_ he thought as he finally got a corner loose and began to peel the tape back, afraid of what he'd find underneath. Would it be two sets of eyelids sewn shut with thread, or a pair of empty, bloody eye sockets with the lids completely cut off? Either thought made him want to cry.

At last he got all of the tape unstuck from her skin and gently pulled the gauze off of her eyes, revealing a pair of closed eyelids with residue of clotted blood on them. Some of the blood had been dissolved and washed away by the ocean water, but specs still remained, especially in the corners and bags of her eyes. Allison struggled to open her eyes because some of the blood had encrusted around her eyelashes and acted as an adhesive to hold them shut. She turned her head to the ground and delicately rubbed them with her fingers until she finally got them to open. When she turned her head back up to John, it made him gasp. "What the ff..." John said, and trailed off as though he ran out of gas.

Her lovely brown eyes were gone. In their place, were a set of youthful looking ones with entrancing blue-grey irises. He was dumbfounded. Clearly Skynet had taken her eyes to be used in her replacement Terminator, Cameron, but why would it give a new set of eyes to Allison? Part of the human experimentation that was happening on the ship? Were they donated from another unfortunate human, or lab grown from stem-cells? He supposed he'd never know. Did they even work? Did Skynet have the technology to splice severed nerves?

"Allison?" John said, cautiously, looking into her eyes, wondering if she could see him. "What do you see?"

Her eyes started to tear up, and her face glowed with happiness. "I see... everything." She reached a hand up and placed it on John's cheek, holding it in place while she moved her head to kiss him.

They embraced each other and deepened their kiss while the waves washed up on shore and swirled water around their lower bodies. After a moment, Allison laid back onto the soft, wet sand, and stared at the sky. Each time a wave came in, the surf would come up just over her ears, cutting out all sounds except the gentle, muffled white-noise of rushing water. It was so serene and tranquil. Was this really happening? Was she really in the past? No machines? No constant running? No Fear? None of that?

Only moments ago, she was blind, terrified, trapped in a machine-prison, and being tortured and experimented on, and the next moment she was transported to a paradise where she could see, she was safe and with the man she loved. It was too good to be true. She was either dreaming, or she had drowned and gone to heaven. She was about to ask John if it was really happening when she spotted a small airplane flying overhead. _It's real_, she said to herself. _It's really real._

John laid down on his side next to her and propped his head up with his hand. He marveled at how that tiny change; that small bit of different color around her pupils was enough to change the look of her whole face. She didn't look any more or less beautiful to him, just different. It didn't change the fact that he sill loved her; not in the least. Then, as if to reinforce that fact to her (and also to himself) he told her. "I love you, Allison."

She turned her head to look up into his charming eyes. "No," she said. She knew he would be upset by saying such a thing, so before he could say anything to go along with the hurt look in his eyes, she followed up with, "I'm not Allison anymore."

John's expression went from hurt to confused. "What?" His mind started jumping to all kinds of conclusions. Did Skynet change more than her eyes? Was she a clone of Allison? Was there a computer in her head instead of a brain? _Jesus... what the hell is going on?_

"Allison Young isn't even born yet," she explained. "Allison Young lived in tunnels, fought machines, and spent seven years in a hell within a hell," she continued to talk about herself in the third person. "That's not me. If we're really in 2006, then that's not me anymore."

Usually people are distressed and confused during an identity crisis. She actually looked happy about it. And why shouldn't she be? She just left a nightmare of an existence behind, and wanted a fresh start. He on the other hand, finally felt somewhat back to normal. He looked down the beach and saw hotel resorts and vendor stands yet to open up for the day. _All of this will be gone again soon,_ he thought, and reminded himself of his destiny. "Well, I'm still John Connor. I don't think anything can ever change that," he said glumly, as he imagined a mushroom cloud in the distance and the buildings of the LA skyline crumbling.

Trying not to depress himself, and bring down Allison's obviously blissful mood, he looked back down at her and smiled. "So," he kissed her quickly on the lips. "Who is this beautiful..." he kissed her again, "auburn haired," another kiss, "pale-blue eyed woman here with me?"

She squinted her eyes and bit her lip, putting some thought into her new identity. "Katie?" Her eyebrows furrowed. "No. That's not right. Linda?" She huffed a little and continued talking to herself. "No, that doesn't sound right either. Summer?"

"No. None of those are right. I fell in love with Allison."

She looked at him and pleaded, "But, John. I want something new."

"Then how about Connor?" He watched her face go blank, as if she didn't quite get what he'd just implied. "Allison Connor," he repeated.

She stared at him a couple more seconds before her eyes welled up with tears. "Of course," she said, and pulled him down on top of her, splashing the water around them. "Say it again." She smiled as she wrapped her legs around him.

"I love you, Allison Connor," he said, then kissed his new wife.

John positioned himself back at her side, their arms and legs still intertwined, and their bodies close. Their foreheads pressed together and their noses touched. He spent the next couple minutes just listening to and feeling her breathe, and thanking luck, fate, and everything in between that they were both still alive. He thought about when and how he would tell her everything. It would be difficult, but he had to do it. She had to understand that some machines could be helpful, that some machines could be trusted, and that some could even be... _loved._

He held up the chip that had been concealed in his fist the whole time. The dawn sunlight glinted off the droplets of water that clung to its grid-like surface. He stared at it with a sense of optimism. Was it true? Could John Henry stop Skynet with the help of Catherine Weaver?

Allison studied it with curious eyes. "What is it?"

Without taking his gaze away from the small piece of metal and plastic, John said, "Hope."

* * *

**Closing notes:**

**This concludes "Rewriting The History of Things To Come."**

**Special thanks to my beta readers for helping me polish things up quite a bit (especially in this final chapter).**

**Thank you all for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.**

**UPDATE 1/8/2010:**

**I have revised the ending. I originally had Allison changing her name to "Kate Connor," in an attempt to cleverly stitch together TSCC and the T3/T4 movie continuation. I have since decided that was a bad idea, especially once I started writing the sequel. So now, Allison is still Allison.**

**Read the continuation of this story in "Doomed to Repeat It."  
**


End file.
